If you are available, you should attend all or a portion of this town hall meeting. Make sure to blog about it when you are done!
UPDATE:
UPDATE ON UNIVERSITY RESPONSE TO BIAS INCIDENTS:
Several bias incidents were reported by students in November 2009 including an assault, shouting of racial slurs and two incidents of graffiti. The university has engaged in significant efforts to communicate the concerns to campus and to engage key constituencies in developing a response plan. A detailed update on the university response to-date is now available on the Dean of Students Web site at www.uni.edu/studentaffairs/deanofstudents/bias-response.
If some of you are unaware, during the fall 2009 semester there were incidents of racism, discrimination, and institution racism here on the UNI campus. These incidents have not only occurred to student but to faculty and staff as well. I will give you a brief history of these incidents.
1. Three Hispanic students were walking back from a store, while confronted in the Gilchrest parking lot as a white GMC Yukon /Chevy Tahoe passes, and then slows down. The vehicle turns around and the windows row down as racial slurs were said to them by the passing vehicle, and a piece of chicken was thrown at the Hispanic students.
2. A male Hispanic student was invited to a party. While he was using the restroom, the door opens and he was hit on the left side of his face. In result of the attack the male student received a mild concussion, death threats not to go to meetings, and unseen phone calls at all hours of the night, as well as a white supremacy group threatening him to shut the hell up, or they will shut him up.
3. A female African American Student from Davenport had a soda can thrown at her face by a passing car.
4. Some minority students feel that because of their ethnicity why do student or Instructor asked them to represent their culture or ethnicity by bias questions or polite racism.
5. While in the classroom when some instructor ask for group studies, or group projects
The other thing that is bothersome is the unwillingness of the non-minority student body to recognize the problem, the UNI newspaper to accurately report the story, the Cedar Falls/UNI police departments in taking a report or investigating the case properly rather than giving the excuse of it not in our jurisdiction or the hesitation of taking a report the time of the incident, rather than three weeks later. If our rights are infringed upon, and the police our here to serve and protect the people.
Does it or does it not violate our Civil Rights and Civil Liberties?
As a non-traditional minority student who does come from a well diverse background, I find these incidents unjust, unacceptable, and intolerable in our society today, in the past, and in the future. Almightily it is up to all of us to make a change and educate each other rather than to be scared of one of another race. Mahatma Gandhi once said “You must be the change you what to see in the world.”
After three meeting with the Student Government, the Dean of Student(s), one with President Allen, Cedar Falls Human Rights Commission, WCF Courier, news radio, and KWWL news 7, other student including myself our tired of being silent. We as student have power and the right to assemble stating the 1st amendment so with that in mind last semester we had a walkout and a silent nonviolent protest against racism and discrimination.
Wow, those are a lot of disturbing events. One thing I find interesting is that nobody (at least no one I know or was ever around) bothered to even mention anything that had been going on. Why is that? Where I come from, this would be all over the news, everyone on campus would be talking about it, etc. Alex brought up a few excellent points, starting with the fact that not a whole lot of non-minority students recognize that racism and discrimination is in fact an issue. I guess it's easy for people to turn a blind eye when they're the ones that aren't being discriminated against.
Another explanation is that maybe it is a regional characteristic? All I've heard since I moved up here from southwest Texas is the whole "Midwestern Nice". People here are supposed to be really super nice, very unconfrontational, refraining from talking about heated issues, etc. This to me is a serious problem when taking into account this type of context (racism towards others). People need to speak up and show that although they are considered the majority, acts of discrimination toward any race/ethinicity/etc should not be tolerated.
Adding to the events that Alex described, I'll add one of my own. Last semester I was talking to a professor about grad school and they made the following comment: "Even though you're a minority, you still have to do the work." Apparently, all I've been doing for the past 6 years is sit on my behind looking brown and pretty. After they made that comment I just smiled and nodded because I was afraid of the professor retaliating. Should I have said something despite knowing full well that they would retaliate in some way? What would you guys do?
I would also like to share my own experiences here on campus. During my first week in Cedar Falls, I dediced to walk around to get to know the place, and I was really surprised that within the first two days of walking with another Latin American student, we had received insults from passing cars four times. The fifth time was more scary for me: I was crossing University Avenue while the light for pedestrians was green, and a car that wanted to make a left turn decided not to wait until I had crossed, and the driver started speeding up. The car almost hit me, and when we were close, the driver shouted insults at me, as well as a racial label. After this incident, I did not know whether I could talk to anyone about it, because as a foreign student who will only be here temporarily, I did not know how safe it would be to say anything. However, now that I hear that I am not alone, I think that we should never be silent. Everyone should be aware of all these things so that we can work together to create a better community and to prevent these kinds of incidents in the future.