Educational Communities Role in Combating Hate

After the opening plenary, the conference went into several concurrent sessions. The session I attended was Educational Communities. The session discussed the role of educational institutes.

Dr. Blazak was one of the panel members and spoke of a culture of fear to speak openly about racial issues. He said many white students feel uncomfortable in bringing up race in fear of being branded a racist.

He said many professors will ask minority students about it to get the ball rolling. According to Blazak, this is not fair to minorities.

“It’s not the job of the minority student to teach white students,” he said.

He said in discussions whites are often shocked by the presence of racism and minorities are often shocked at white ignorance.

“Many white students think racism ended in the 60’s, or with the Cosby show,” Blazak said.

He said in order to facilitate discussion, institutes need a safe place where people can speak freely of their experience and ignorance.

Ana Guerriero, Director of the Office of Gay and Lesbian programs at Central Michigan University, spoke of the need of engaging students in opposing hate. She said students at CMU are required to take a class in diversity before graduating, but that education is not enough.

“We need to figure out how to turn education into action,” Guerriero said.

Guerriero said attempts had been made to get an anti-discrimination policy in Mt. Pleasant and that CMU still lacked coverage of sexual and gender identity in nondiscrimination policies.

Guerriero also noted recent progress over homophobia.  She told an incident in April where anti-gay chalking appeared during Pride Week. She said the incident led to an outpouring of support from the community, including donations by local businesses to a silent auction used to fund events. She said during the summer Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club had offered to fund a program to educate students on gay and lesbian issues.

When I asked about the chalking incident, specifically about accusation that the CMU Chapter of YAF being accused of the chalking, CMU-YAF’s counter accusation was that the chalking was done by gay activists.  Guerreiro said she didn’t know and that the university and police had not told her about any investigations they had done.

Paulette Granberry Russell, Senior Advisor to the President for Diversity, spoke about MSU’s issues with hate and bias. She said some students came in from areas where everyone looked like them. She spoke of the issue of roommates.

“Sometimes we get calls from parents saying they don’t think their children will get along with their roommates. Is it code? We don’t always know. Sometimes though, it’s a little more direct,” Granberry Russell said.

She also said 9/11 brought on a series of concerns from Muslim students on campus.
“September 11th raised a whole host of concerns,” she said. “Muslims were concerned about a backlash on campus and when they left the boundaries of campus.”

She brought up the case of Professor Indreck Wichman, the mechanical engineering professor who in February 2006 wrote n offensive e-mail to the Muslim Students Association telling them to leave the country.

Granberry Russell also spoke of student engagement in the I Stop Hate: MSU United campaign. She said administrators had come up with the idea of an MSU United campaign when they were approached by students to launch a I Stop Hate campaign. The two ideas were combined into one program.