New group aiming to raise awareness on race
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By Brett Dawson
Senior Staff Writer
Black students make up over 5 percent of the student population at UK, and while a host of different races formulate the student body, there are those who would call the mostly white makeup of campus racially homogeneous.
Kelly Meget isn't one of those people.
Meget, one of the students behind A.W.A.R.E. -- the Alliance Working to Achieve Racial Equality -- sees UK's campus as something more.
"Coming from a small town where there wasn't much diversity," Meget said, "I came to UK and saw a place where there were so many different kinds of people. It was a great experience."
Meget, a senior, became so interested in people of different races and their interaction, she decided to pursue it as a career -- her major in sociology and her minor in African-American studies, she said, will lead her to a career "concentrating on ra ce relations."
When Meget was asked last fall to join the Institute for Healing Racism, she jumped at the chance.
The Institute, formed partly to deal with the racial tensions surrounding the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer, provided the opportunity Meget thought UK students needed -- an outlet to voice frustrations over racial issues.
The Institute continued holding meetings throughout the year, and when its founder, Mahsa Vossugh, graduated last spring, Meget and Jude McPherson, an English and sociology major at Lexington Community College, took over the program.
With help from members of a steering committee, which includes Dean of Students David Stockham, McPherson and Meget chose the name A.W.A.R.E. to "better reflect" the goals of the program, McPherson said.
The name has changed, but the goal of A.W.A.R.E. remains much the same as that of the Institute for Healing Racism -- to provide a sounding board where people can examine and discuss racial issues.
"UK does not have any programs that address problems that deal with race and ethnicity, and that's sad," McPherson said. "You can walk across campus and see Asian students, Latino students, Caucasian students, African-American students -- and all of th ese groups tend to stick to themselves."
A.W.A.R.E. begins addressing the reasons tonight at its first meeting, beginning at 7 p.m. in 305 Student Center. The group isn't concerned with the number of minority students on campus. In fact, McPherson said, it's far more important to address rac ial tensions on a campus like UK's, where white students are in the vast majority.
"When there's a lack of diversity in any arena, more stereotypes and more untruths about groups are going to come out," McPherson said. "In an environment that is predominantly Caucasian, it becomes even more important to deal with these issues."
The goal of A.W.A.R.E. is to deal with those issues through communication and Meget hopes for a large participation from the UK student body.
"We don't pretend to think that we can solve all of this campus' racial problems," she said. "What we are is a starting point where people can come and listen and hopefully get involved in the discussion.
"Maybe we'll make people think, maybe we won't, but we're here one way or another."
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