The Office of Student Diversity Initiatives’ Raw happened without attendees, except the people who were leading the talk. Diversity Club’s Raw is intended to bring a group of students together to talk about racism, stereotypes, individual acceptance and any other topics the club decides on. The club hosted Raw two weeks ago in Founder’s Hall. The event did not happen as intended because no one showed up and the room that the talk would have been hosted in was locked with the lights out.
The talks are lead by group leaders, members of the Diversity club, to come up with topics for the participating students to talk about. On February 24, the club’s talk included only four people talking about school.
“Nobody shows up to support it,” Ronald Dinkins, freshman biology major, said. The lack of people showing up is common for the Diversity club.
“The people who do come are the same people every week,” Sarah Fraizer, senior psychology and math major, said.
With the classroom being closed and no one attending, Felicia Melvin, sophomore communication major, Fraizer and Dinkins sat in the lounge area on the third floor of Founder’s to talk. Katherine Liberi, senior__, ended up joining, since she was already in the lounge. The conversations were about school, an upcoming show, homework, etc.
“I wasn’t originally planning on taking part in the conversation, but I knew Sarah from one of my classes.” Liberi said.
The group sat for about an hour just randomly talking. With the room closed the group leaders, Melvin and Fraizer, had planned on leaving.
If the event had taken place, the chosen topic for Raw was racism.
“I don’t really experience it,” Denkins said. “I think it has a lot to do with your social status, which may be why people don’t want to go to a Diversity Club talk about diversity.”
The club is not very known on the campus, which has lead to the lack of attendance in the meetings.
“I’ve never heard of the diversity club before,” Natalie Markle, freshman business major, said. “I don’t even know what they do.”
“I saw the signs on the cork boards,” Ian Arayata, freshman business major, said. “But I didn’t know what it meant. I just thought that it had almost every race in it.”
Melvin, Liberi and Denkins did talk about possible ways to get people more involved and aware of the club and the meetings.
“More advertisement and promotion,” Dinkins said. “But getting people aware and willing to participate is another story.”
“The Office of Student Diversity Initiatives strives to empower students of all backgrounds,” according to the diversity club’s Web page. “The club focuses on programming and events that promotes diversity for African-American, Latino, Asian, & Native American, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender, international students, staff and faculty.
Raw is held every second and fourth Wednesday of every month. To participate in a Raw with the Diversity Club visit the office in the Widener building located next to the Seal office.
Let me start by saying there is no “Diversity Club” on campus. This event is provided by the Office of Student Diversity and is set-up to be sponsored by student groups across campus to have an open forum for difficult dialogues. Though student groups have been invited, there was not a group sponsoring that day so four students isn’t a bad number to have a conversation. We did report the room being locked to the scheduling coordinator and unfortunately, things like this happen from time to time but the two diversity leaders running the dialogue did a great job of working around that challenge.
Besides providing accurate information about campus activities and departments, it would also be helpful to offer possible ideas or challenges to students and ask the reasons why many do not come out to various activities on campus.
Hopefully Loquitor readers will not just focus on the pessimistic stance of this article but begin to realize that there are great ways to be a part of activities throughout the campus that they are missing out on.