Spring Leadership Symposium Focuses on Diversity

Dozens of students gathered Saturday at the Spring Leadership Symposium to brainstorm proposals that would help the University become a more inclusive and welcoming environment.

The day culminated in a presentation of proposals given to Larry Dietz, vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, and he said he hopes some recommendations can be realized in the future. Every semester, Student Development sponsors a leadership conference, and each spring, a smaller symposium is held that centers on a more focused topic. The symposium, which was held in the Student Center, focused on diversity and multiculturalism at SIUC.

Paulette Curkin, an advisor to the Saluki Rainbow Network, said the event was structured to provide students the opportunity to interact with representatives from six target groups: African-Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Gays/Lesbians, Disabled, and White/Privileged. "It's built on the assumption that we develop our biases and our prejudices because we lack familiarity with people that are different from ourselves," Curkin said. "A big concern on campus is our inability to communicate across differences."

Curkin said that after an initial question and answer session in the morning, representatives from each target group, along with a co-facilitator, went into separate rooms to hold more focused sessions. Students were open to attend four 30-minute sessions in whatever combination of target groups. Afterward, the 60 students were broken into six groups, which were represented by colors of the rainbow, and each group was asked to produce three proposals. The student proposals were to be in response to interaction with the representatives.

The representatives agreed to do this with the understanding that they had to be thick-skinned and prepared to encounter possibly ignorant questions, Curkin said. "It was an open exchange with no structure - it was whatever the students wanted to make it," she said. The openness of the symposium was in the interest of breaking down stereotypes and increasing people's experience with different groups, Curkin said.

Lea Pagels, a sophomore studying psychology and administration of justice, was the spokesperson for the orange group and proposed that dorms could institute multicultural floors, as they do co-ed floors. Pagels also commented that the lighting around campus at night is insufficient, some call boxes around campus do not work and the transit system does not operate from on-campus to on-campus. Pagels said women who have night classes cannot receive rides from the transit system if the two destination points are both on campus. "They won't pick her up from Lawson and bring her back to Mae Smith, for instance," Pagels said.

"I know girls who call the police to bring them home because they don't have a car and they don't want to walk home alone," she said. Two groups also proposed the establishment of freshmen seminar classes that would focus on opening student awareness to diversity on campus. "It's by chance that we have such a good representation [of students], and I think it speaks well of the University," Curkin said. Dietz said it was noteworthy that a large amount of students from diverse backgrounds and diverse organizations attended the event.

"My sense is that sessions like today will promote additional ideas that perhaps we haven't thought about heretofore and that might deserve some attention and possibly some funding too," Dietz said.