Connect 4 proved to have a strong purpose and need at our school. As we like to say, we are the only “non-cultural, cultural group” around. Instead of celebrating one specific culture or heritage, we strive to celebrate them all. Instead of focusing on what divides us, we strive to focus on what brings us together. Our programming has been hugely successful on campus and has taught students to better embrace and celebrate diversity, dialogue, understanding and change within our community.

Recently, however, we have seen that programming alone is not enough. With the Mother’s Bar incident, the discussions of racial profiling on campus and the dialogue dealing with WU/FUSED and socio-economic diversity issues all having been prominent this past semester, we have come to realize that policy aspects are equally important to truly addressing issues of diversity and discrimination at Wash. U. The University administration, understandably, tends to work with Student Union, not specific student groups, on issues of policy that affect the student body. That is why I plan to strongly advocate for the creation of the Diversity Affairs Council (DAC) within Student Union.

Compared to our sister schools, Washington University’s student government is one of the very few that doesn’t have a diversity position within it. It is imperative that we change this. The DAC would be responsible for working with the many student groups and with SU to have policy-level input on all kinds of issues of diversity. It would advise both SU Execs and Senate and would use SU’s legitimacy and infrastructure to facilitate dialogue and co-programming between the many diversity groups on our campus and between the appropriate diversity-oriented members of the University administration.

Connect 4 will continue to exist as a student group and will continue with its mission. But the DAC is an essential addition to the structure of SU that will allow diversity to be furthered on our campus, and issues of hate, discrimination and prejudice to be dealt with more effectively in the future. I strongly support the formation of the DAC and encourage you to express your support for it at an upcoming Senate meeting as well!

Fernando Cutz
Senior Class President, Class of 2010

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.”