In response to controversial recent postings on the Daily Jolt and Facebook, several primarily black fraternities organized a "University Diversity" panel to discuss race relations on campus.
Some of the 150 people in attendance came in response to a posting on The Daily Jolt by Jolt editor and Eagle editorial columnist Paul Perry. The posting, which detailed events celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. week, concluded with the sentence, "We're pretty sure things will be back to normal next week."
Additionally, others attended in response to a comment on a photo on Facebook. The comment, about a picture of an African American and Puerto Rican male with nine white females, referred to the women as "white hoes."
It's outstanding that the sponsoring organizations took a constructive approach and brought these issues to the broader university community instead of keeping them within the AU minority community.
Bringing the issues to the university community at large is also important because no racial group is immune from prejudices, and it's important to discuss them in a unified, constructive setting - as well as to understand the stereotypes at work and start breaking them down through face-to-face interaction.
The university should do more to encourage this type of dialogue. According to Vice President of Campus Life Gary Wright, an event like this takes place on campus once every five years. If this is true, entire classes of students (plus the large population of students who are abroad) are sometimes deprived of this facet to their education.
