The Orbis

As the liberal, progressive and multi-cultural paper on campus, it is our duty to cover cultural events around campus that promote diversity and tolerance. I feel personally at fault for the lack of coverage of diverse student programs around campus.

In the coming semester, however, I hope to make it up to all of our readers by making campus, community and national multiculturalism the top priority when choosing and assigning our articles. We remain committed to covering upcoming events and past events of all of Orbis' supporting groups, which include Amnesty International, Asian Student Association, Black Student Alliance, College Democrats, Green Party, Hillel, Lambda, VandyFems, the Vanderbilt Association of Hispanic Students and many others. You have our promise that we will create a stronger network with these groups in order to better serve the campus community.

On another note, I attended the recent Young Alumni Trustee Forum with the hope of having questions answered directly by members of the Board of Trust, a few of whom were in attendance. However, I was dismayed by the format, which was instead an opportunity to voice concerns over issues to the YATs, who would then relate these concerns at a later time to the Board as a whole. One of the issues raised and which needs more coverage is the problem of diversity on campus. The statistic floating around is that we are ranked second to last in campus integration, which is absolutely astonishing, especially considering that we are also ranked a top 20 institution by US News and World Report.

It is all too obvious that individuals on this campus self-segregate themselves. Just walk through Rand during lunchtime and you'll see the white students sitting with the white students and the black students sitting with the black students.

To address this problem, I proposed the implementation of social mixers recently to the Young Alumni Trustees, not with the intent of educating outright or necessarily having a discussion of race, but functioning to bring people together and to learn about one another in a purely social atmosphere.

Article Tools