Schools' self-segregation focus of meeting tonight
- By Holly Celeste Terry
Staff Writer
Speak up! Speak out about self-segregation on campus.
A couple of years ago, "60 Minutes" did a special on the segregation between white and black students at Duke University. Today at 8 p.m. in the Student Center room 359, the Student Activities Board Multicultural Committee and the Alliance Working to Achieve Racial Equality will g ive students a chance to speak out about the self-segregation among students on campus.
During the first part of the meeting, a tape dealing with race relations and racial tension will be shown. After viewing the tape, students will be asked to engag e in an impromptu discussion about the racial segregation that takes place on this campus.
The idea for a campus speak out derived from the meetings that took place last year after the Antonio Sullivan shooting.
"When you look around campus, you usually see white students hanging with whites, black students hanging with blacks, Asian students with Asian students, etc. There's hardly ever any intermingling between the races or ethnic backgrounds," said Kelly Meget, one of the leaders of AWARE
"Our nation has become even more divided over the past couple of months," said Meget. "The things in the media over the past few months are only causing more separation between the races on campus."
Juanita Jones, co-chairperson of SAB Multicultural C ommittee, agrees that segregation between the races is an important issue across America.
"Self-segregation between the races should not be considered something bad. However, it is an issue that needs a lot of attention," said Jones. "People segre gate themselves for many different reasons. This is a topic that needs to be discussed between the students."
While some see no harm with "birds of a feather flocking together", Meget said most people, especially white students tend to talk about othe rs segregating themselves.
"They hardly ever consider themselves as segregating from others," Meget said.
Both SAB and AWARE, however, hope to create some kind of awareness between the races, said Avi Weitzman, co-chairperson of the SAB Multicul tural Committee.
"Hopefully we will ignite conversation among the races and different ethnic backgrounds. Once we do that we can create an understanding on why certain races or ethnic groups do the things they do, and how it relates to their culture, " Jones said.
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