Student Senators and leaders were placed out of their comfort zone, tackling issues at Thursday’s “A Piece of the Pie.” The diversity forum attracted over 30 student leaders at the Hughes-Trigg Varsity, where pizza and pie was served.
Jill DeTemple, a religious studies professor, mediated the two -hour forum, posing questions such as “What does ‘I am an SMU student’ really mean?”
DeTemple started the discussion by noting that everyone was sitting with people they already knew. DeTemple asked attendees to move to different seats and to begin reaching out of their comfort zones.
“What we really wanted was to just have people here, sitting in a room and discussing diversity-and we surpassed that expectation,” said Diversity Committee Chair Ben Wells. “We had a diverse group with different backgrounds and opinions and I think we really got an idea of what different groups consider actual problems on campus,” he said.
Senior T.K. Stillman said a campus concern was what he referred to as the “social penetration theory.”
“Students aren’t going deep enough into diversity,” said Stillman. “We need to be developing relationships where we really get to know someone,” acknowledged Stillman. “Where we can find the core of a person and understand who they really are,” he said.
Junior Michelle Wigianto agreed that understanding people is important, but argued that more needs to be done for students to mingle with new and different people.
“A large problem with diversity is that we immediately stop where we’re uncomfortable. Everyone lives in their own bubble and you don’t feel the need to leave that bubble, or meet new people and experiences, said Wigianto.”
After debating the definition of what diversity meant for everyone in the forum, students began verbalizing prominent issues and concrete ways to improve the diversity on campus.
Former Diversity Committee Chair Rachel Ball said, “Education is the answer to the beginning of interaction and understanding others.” In one of Ball’s classes, she was assigned to go to a torture center and interact with people from all over the world who have undergone some sort of torture. “Experiences like these are so effective. It’s a hands on way to meet new people and learn about different lives and find out why people think the way they do,” said Ball.
Though the forum focused on surfacing campus concerns, the recently elected Student Body President Taylor Russ, ended the forum by asking his peers to keep these issues in mind over the next few weeks. Russ urged attendees to keep in touch and to continue to propose new solutions for diversity.
The diversity committee will meet at the beginning of next semester to continue the discussion of diversity.
“Hopefully this forum encouraged people to get involved and show up at meetings like these so we can fix the problems together,” said committee chair Wells.
