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Committee
to look at inclusiveness The Inclusiveness Task Force has been working to fulfill an action plan to unite all student organizations on campus since its creation in October, said ITF chairwoman Kellen Correia. “Our goal is to tackle the diversity issues that we see and to make the TCU community a more close-knit community,” Correia said. “We know that we can’t fix everything, but we want to do our part in trying to make it a better place.” Terry James, an ITF member, said the task force is a student-led diversity group designed to ensure that TCU continues to grow and develop in the area of inclusiveness. The idea behind the task force is to back up talk with action, James said. “We are really a concerned group of students who love TCU, and we want to work as hard as we can to make sure that it fulfills its (mission statement),” James said. Correia said the first step in the process was to have the 12-person task force meet with the leaders of 12 minority organizations. The organizations include Students for Asian-Indian Cultural Awareness, Organization for Latino-American Students and International Student Association, she said. “We are trying to start with the minority groups because it is such a small population on campus,” Correia said. “Before we can bridge the gap between the majority and the minority, we have to bridge the gap between the minority organizations.” James said each member is equipped with a list of questions regarding TCU’s diversity and has been assigned as a liaison to one of the minority groups to gather opinions on how diversity can be improved. Cornell Thomas, special assistant to the chancellor for diversity and community, said each of the minority organizations is supposed to select a program, such as a dance, and try to make it more inclusive. “They will try to invite groups of students that typically would not attend this particular program or activity,” Thomas said. “The whole premise is that once people begin to interact with one another in social settings, they begin to see and know one another more and they can get beyond perceptual barriers.” In her three years at TCU, Jamie White, president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, said she has seen many unsuccessful attempts to make the TCU campus more united. As the leader of an organization approached by the task force, White, a junior marketing major, said she hopes it will make students aware that they are not as unified as they should be. “It’s so segregated right now,” White said. “If we were together, we could get a lot more things accomplished.” Thomas said that the main goal of the task force over the next two semesters will be to broaden the perspectives of students and give them a platform to deal with the issues they want to influence. “Students are the most powerful force on campus, and if we can empower them to do some things that they say they want done, then there is no better work that we can do,” Thomas said. Task force members will meet March 6 to discuss findings from their assigned organization and their plans for next semester, Thomas said. The task force developed out of the Council on Diversity’s annual Conference on Inclusiveness fall 2001. Laura
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2002 |
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