Students talk diversity, discuss problems, solutions

Ice cream might have helped cool discussion of a hot topic Thursday.
 
The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center and the IU Student Association sponsored the Ice Cream Social and Justice Issues event in the Neal-Marshall Grand Hall for audience members to discuss issues like minority profiling, diversity admission rates and affirmative action.

Students disagreed on who should take responsibility for IU’s failure to hit their goal of doubling the number of minority students on campus. 

Opinions differed over whether it was the school’s responsibility, or minority students’ responsibility, to recruit students of different races. 

“I don’t think IU is failing,” senior Noelle Gipson said, who is involved in different recruitment groups on campus. “I think the part where the issue comes about is there’s not enough minority students going out to recruit. As a minority student, we’re not doing enough to go out and recruit students that look like us.”

Three students took the microphone to express their discomfort with being a minority student at IU.

One law student said she was one of 12 black students in her law class of 250.

“It makes the environment very hostile sometimes,” she said. “I would never reach out to an incoming black law student and tell them to come. I would never recruit because it has been horrible so far.”

Another audience member asked why IU allowed TRAD Youth to continue as a school-
sponsored organization on campus if they supported racism and anti-gay sentiments.

“Right now, from the administration, we are tied to this legal framework that a state institution has to abide by,” said Steve Veldkamp, assistant dean of students and director of Student Life and Learning. “It doesn’t mean we have to like it.”

Members of the panel of experts sitting at the front of the room said there has been discussion within the administration about editing the policies to eliminate hate speech on campus or making all University-sponsored organizations sign an anti-discrimination agreement.

“One of the positive outcomes of this negativity is the fact that more things like this are occurring on campus,” Veldkamp said.

The student participants and panelists agreed that the best response, as of now, was to fight hate speech with more positive messages.

“We need to drown out their messages with our positive messages,” said Brandon Washington, a member of predominantly black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi. 

Discussion ended on the acknowledgement that, despite the perception that racism is no longer prevalent in modern society, race is still an issue on the IU campus and in general society.

Dr. Sylvia Martinez, an associate professor from the School of Education, stressed the importance of classes on more diverse subjects in college.

She referred to K-12 curriculum as “vanilla,” because it left out a lot of history on minority groups.

“It’s everyone’s history,” Martinez said. “Everyone had a part of it, whether you were the oppressor or the
oppressed.”