The new Diversity Cabinet is uniting the campus diverse groups

A new Diversity Cabinet was organized by Luis Armenta, the Utah State University Student Association (USUSA) Organizations and Campus Diversity vice president, at the beginning of this semester.

The cabinet is student-run directly under Armenta, and the purpose of it is to enhance the diversity on campus through initiatives, services, events and the like. There are 23 individuals on the cabinet, made up of presidents, or representatives, from each of the diversity clubs as well as the USUSA graduate senator, the USUSA student advocate, one student-at-large representative and one representative from the powerhouse groups on campus like RHA, Greek and USU Ambassadors.

“To understand the reason why the cabinet was formed you have to understand that there’s two major groups of diversity on campus,” Armenta said. “We have the Access and Diversity Center and also the office of Global Engagement, each with their own clubs. Both organizations are amazing and do much for this campus, but they hardly ever do anything together even though it could be very beneficial.”

There are eight diversity groups from the Access and Diversity Center and then there are seven diversity groups from the office of Global Engagement. Armenta said that sometimes different diversity groups will put on the same event but on different days and different times simply because they were unaware of each other’s activities.

“The main benefit I have seen with the cabinet already is that since all the groups meet together now, they all share what is going on in their groups and all the leaders can come together to help each other out for different activities,” said Oscar Zamudio, the USUSA diversity director. “Luis and I were not able to go to every group’s meetings before, and so now it is so much easier to just have all the leaders come to us for these meetings. The cabinet makes our jobs so much easier and more effective. Everyone now knows what is going on at all times and it gets rid of all the communication barriers.”

Because of the cabinet, these separate groups can come together and plan out different events and activities including the International Banquet, which will be held Friday in the Taggart Student Center Ballroom starting at 7 p.m. The next event will be the annual Global Picnic, which will be held during the Monday of A-Week in April.

“These events help promote awareness about diversity, and allow the student body to become more involved because a lot of the times the students will come to their own diverse group’s events but we don’t receive the rest of the student body and we would really like to,” said Michael Scott Peters, the student-at-large representative on the cabinet.

Peters said that he was interested in becoming involved with the cabinet because he wanted to reach out to the students with diverse backgrounds and make them feel included so that they can have a better college experience.

“As the student-at-large representative, I go to the meetings and offer an opinion, because these presidents all represent their groups and then I represent the rest of the student body,” Peters said. “I believe that college can be rough for someone coming from a different country, which is why I have such an appreciation for Luis and this cabinet.”

— jillian.mccarthy@aggiemail.usu.edu