The student-run group Natural Ties organizes these weekly dinners to bring together community members with mental disabilities and Washington University students. Natural Ties dinners are held every Monday night from 6 to 7 p.m. in the rear of the upper level of South Forty House dining.

The large group consists mostly of students and community members with mental disabilities, but some parents and social workers also attend. Dinner is concluded with announcements, which provide an opportunity for participants to share personal bulletins such as birthdays, accomplishments and family news.

Additionally, participant Margi Brightfield teaches the group a new “sign of the week” in American Sign Language. The organization relies on donations of meal points from students to pay for the community members’ dinners.

Natural Ties, which operates under the Campus Y, hopes to encourage community members to develop bonds with Washington University students and with each other. Participants cite the opportunity to converse with a variety of people as the most valuable aspect of the program.

“It’s helping the community. There are those who need it and those who don’t…It’s good that it’s there for people of varying disabilities,” says John Casalone, a participant who lives in the area and has been attending the dinners for about a year.

“I love that persons with various disabilities can get together…it’s something that may be impossible given their disability,” says social worker Ron Glenn, who also comes to the dinners weekly.

The program benefits both students and community attendees.

“It’s great to come here and meet people. We’re very fortunate to participate,” says Wash. U. sophomore Austin Ekaireb, referring to himself and fellow members of the fraternity Sigma Alpha Mu, which has a history of participating in Natural Ties dinners, along with other Greek organizations.

Joanna Perdomo, a junior and one of three student program leaders, emphasizes the unique impact the program has had on her.

“We get to meet really incredible people. Working with people with disabilities has taught me how to live your life despite challenges…People are just so loving and willing to share their stories with you…The optimism and the happiness that everyone has is really inspiring.”

Participants also cite the announcements component of the program as especially instrumental in forming a community bond. Community members develop pride from the knowledge that a community appreciates them, Glenn says.

“It allows them to see themselves as people, not disabilities; it promotes that humanism,” he says.

The number of community participants has increased steadily throughout Natural Ties’s eight-year history, though the organization recently has not done any active recruiting.

Gathering enough meal point donations to fund dinners for community members has been a challenge. Natural Ties has worked with Bon Appétit to provide its participants with complete, balanced meals at a price that can be met by meal point donations. Each Monday, Bon Appétit prepares special deals that package together selected entrées, sides, a fruit or dessert, and a beverage.

Program leaders have also found that bringing together a diverse group of people that represents a variety of disabilities has sometimes required teaching participants about the different disabilities to ensure smooth integration. Perdomo says that she enjoys this aspect of the program.

Natural Ties remains open to new participants, including students and community members. Nathan Greenbaum, who has worked for Quadrangle Housing for over 10 years and has participated in Natural Ties since its inception, says, “We need more new people.”

In addition to its weekly dinners, Natural Ties hosts five special events each semester, including holding holiday parties, attending a Wash. U. athletic event, and eating dinner at Blueberry Hill.

Sigma Alpha Mu has also hosted barbecues for Natural Ties participants in the past.

Natural Ties is currently adding an educational component to its programming, discussing with its participants issues such as voting in local and national elections, the Special Olympics, and healthy eating.

The 25 or so students who attended the roundtable split into committees devoted to specific areas of campus life, including Washington University Police Department (WUPD) affairs, on-campus student awareness, Residential Life, student group interaction and off-campus affairs.

Students in the taskforce on WUPD affairs debated whether some students’ allegations that WUPD officers approach black students more than white ones means the officers are guilty of racial profiling.

While the group did not reach a conclusion, group members agreed that reports of suspicious activity filed by students against other students are a major contributor to WUPD stopping black students more often.

Members of the group said they would like to initiate dialogue between WUPD and students regarding methods of identifying suspicious persons, and also explored the idea of a “walk in your shoes” orientation program in which students would learn about the differences that race makes in daily life.

The “on-campus awareness” taskforce was primarily concerned with the issue of self-segregation in the student body. Group members said they hoped to break down what they termed the “fishbowl” phenomenon: a tendency for important conversations about race issues to remain confined to racially or ethnically homogenous groups.

“I know that as an African American male I have particular conversations with other African American males on campus that pretty much we keep amongst ourselves,” said senior Regis Murayi, one of the six black students rejected from Mothers bar.

The task force proposed mediating conversations about self-segregation on freshman floors. Members of the group also plan to develop initiatives to draw a greater and more diverse body of students to events like Monday night’s roundtable to engage students who might otherwise be uninvolved in the dialogue about diversity issues.

Like the on-campus awareness task force, the ResLife committee offered a plan to spur more diversity dialogue on freshman floors by designing special programming to be led by residential advisors. Group members also planned a conference with Residential Life about making ethnic and racial diversity a priority when forming freshman floors.

The student group interaction taskforce envisioned working with Student Union to create an incentive program that rewards collaboration between student groups. It also proposed the development of a multicultural retreat in which students from diverse backgrounds would bond over a variety of recreational and discussion-based activities.

Members of the off-campus taskforce expressed a desire to raise awareness of racial and class implications of policy decisions behind recent MetroLink service cuts. The taskforce hopes to launch a visual campaign to make the faces of St. Louis residents affected by the service cuts more visible to students.

Senior De Nichols, co-president of Connect 4, said her group would facilitate further meetings of the taskforces created at Monday night’s roundtable to lay out more concrete action steps. The organization hopes that this event will be a first step in empowering passionate students to turn thoughts into action.

Said junior Wanda Savala, Connect 4’s other co-president, “[Students] will start something but they don’t really feel supported. We need to rally those students who are doing something, who have ideas.”

The turnout for the roundtable was short of Connect 4’s expectations, paling in comparison to the more than 300 students who filled Lab Sciences 300 for the town hall meeting.

The large gap in the turnout between the town hall meeting and Monday’s roundtable elicited concerns from some that the enthusiasm exhibited by the general student body in recent weeks will not last as the Mothers bar incident fades into the past.

“[The turnout] kind of made me question how passionate, how committed students are to affecting change in this area,” Nichols said.

Nonetheless, she said she was confident that a smaller group of students would continue to converse and act on race and diversity issues.

“Quite honestly, I am a very optimistic, faithful person,” she said. “The rational side of me says that people are gonna let this die, but I think we have a committed body of students who won’t let this die out.”