Column: Where is the diversity in USUSA?

Where is the diversity in USUSA?

Recently I attended a meeting of one of the multicultural groups at Utah State. It was a discussion based meeting that focused on student involvement and leadership. A reoccuring theme came out and it opened my eyes — where is the diversity in USUSA and other leadership positions?

I honestly had never questioned this before. Not being a minority myself, I really just did not notice. This sense of disillusionment that the majority of us live in contributes to the fact that there is a lack of diversity in USUSA.

Past, present, and future candidates for USUSA have been majority all white. In our current USUSA there are two people who could be considered minorities, Chelsea Yoshikawa and Anuj Khasgiwala  In the most recent elections both candidates for diversity VP were white males. Why aren’t minority groups more represented in our student leadership positions?

There isn’t one group or person to blame for this issue. I mean who do you point the finger at when you aren’t fully sure how to solve the problem. A first way I see it could change is actually having diverse candidates run for positions of power. At the meeting this was briefly touched on. Several students expressed how they have applied several times for various positions such as; Blue Crew, A-Team, and other committees, and never gotten accepted. They had given up on trying for these positions.

For me, this was very disheartening to hear. As a freshman, I came here with the belief that anyone can achieve anything they want to at a University. I believed that opportunities were open to all who would work for it. But now I question this.

My message to these students who feel like giving up is please don’t. We need you. We need your perspective, knowledge, and experiences to lead us into the future. If you want your voice to be heard you cannot be silent. Doing nothing will not allow for change. So to see a difference we need you to be the difference.

My next thought was why wouldn’t we want diversity in our leaders? The university setting is ideal to meet so many different kinds of people and learn from them. Having diverse student leaders would only increase this. Imagine how many more diverse students would be interested in attending Utah State if they saw that our student leaders represented them.

Maybe a idea is to have our current leaders reach out to minority groups. If our leaders expressed interest in their problems and listened to them it would lay down a foundation for this cycle to be broken. Then these smaller groups would feel validated enough to again try for these positions of power.

I want my leaders to represent everyone. Latinos, Blacks, Polynesians, Whites, everyone deserves to have their perspective heard and shown through our student leaders. It will make us stronger as a university and allow for us to create change. A phrase that our former president Michael Scott Peters coined for 2017 was “Everyone Belongs.” So shouldn’t everyone belong in USUSA?

—@shelbsterblack, shelby.black@aggiemail.usu.edu