Administration resolves, creates discrimination
After images of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama being lynched were brought into one of her classes with no immediate reprimand, Christina Mason said she felt helpless knowing members of her class felt that way.
As the only minority student in her class, Mason said she was uncomfortable approaching the students or the teacher, although she wanted something to be done.
“I felt uncomfortable, marginalized, disrespected and helpless to defend myself,” Mason said in an invitation e-mail she sent out to many students.
Mason said she took her case first to the Multicultural Student Office and began to learn there were a lot of students like her who had experienced such problems in some of their classes as well.
In her particular case, Mason said the situation was resolved by holding an open discussion about the situation in her classroom with discussion facilitators.
Mason said she wanted not just to help resolve her own problem but to also create awareness and help students know where to go if something like this happened to them.
“At first I didn’t know where to go,” Mason said. “I wanted to help other minority students know exactly what to do in a situation like this.”
In an effort to help prevent problems in the future, Mason scheduled an appointment with USU President Stan Albrecht, bringing more than 15 students with her to discuss things that could be done to help people that find themselves in her situation, and to prevent these types of occurrences in the future.
“We don’t want to get people fired or in trouble,” Mason said. “We just want people to give us the same cultural and social understanding.”
Mason said she hopes in the future to see more diversity training on campus and a link on USU’s main Web site to help students understand diversity and discrimination on campus.
USU Provost Raymond Coward said he felt the university handled the situation “quickly and decisively” and he sees the opportunity to use this case as a “teaching moment” for the university.
“We are always trying to get better at this,” Coward said. “We need to use it as an opportunity to address critical and racial challenges.”
The meeting designed to prevent discrimination ended up producing a new discrimination, when a Utah Statesman reporter and photographer were kicked out of the meeting for being members of the press. All the other students were invited to stay.
Albrecht said the meeting was private, so members of the press couldn’t attend as reporters, even though they had been invited to the event, but they could stay as students. Utah State Open Meetings law provides for any member of the public to attend a public meeting, which includes the press.
The Utah Open and Public Meetings Act does not specify one branch or member of the public for exclusion to public meetings.
A formal letter of protest will be submitted to the President’s Office by The Utah Statesman.
–debrajoy.h@aggiemail.usu.edu