April 6, 2006
Three dozen students, staff and faculty spent their lunch hour Wednesday discussing diversity, or the lack thereof, on campus.
On a campus that is 80 percent composed of white students, ethnic issues are often overlooked. Because of this, the university sponsored a Conversation on Diversity titled "Campus Violence, Campus Solutions" in Bell Memorial Union Room 303.
Although the conference was scheduled before the racist incident off-campus on Sunday, the racial slur and swastika drawn on Janece Jones' car were a big topic of conversation.
Joe Wills, the director of public affairs and publications, introduced the topic of violence against minority students at Chico State.
Society has a problem of putting temporary fixes on diversity issues, but there needs to be a better and bigger solution, Wills said.
Professor Andrew Dick of the sociology department was the speaker and leader of the discussion. He has recently published articles about modern racism among college students and has completed a new study about racism and intolerance in Chico.
Racism doesn't just affect minority students: it affects all students, Dick said.
Dick has been interested in racial issues since he was young, so he started to become proactive, he said.
"I'm an old school punk rocker from L.A.," Dick said. "I'm always angry."
At Chico State, there have been seven hate incidences since 2004, he said.
"These issues are social problems, which means they are created by humans and their behavior, which means it can be addressed and fixed if we care enough," he said.
Sometimes the issues are caused by national events, such as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many Middle Eastern citizens, or even people who looked like they could be Middle Eastern, were targeted during the aftermath of the incident.
"What happened after 9-11 was fascinating," he said.
Minority students were hearing remarks based solely on their ethnicity, and violence against minorities was escalating across the nation, he said. So many students were affected by the violence that some even dropped out of college.
The problem even reached Chico State, which is 3,000 miles away from New York City, Dick said.
To study the rate of violence intolerance against minorities in Chico, Dick composed a survey of 390 Butte College and Chico State students from different college courses.
"Research certainly indicates that each one of us holds at least one prejudice," he said.
Half of the students in the survey reported that they hear racist comments at least every other week, and 14.5 percent reported that they hear racist comments every day on campus.
For students to be hearing that amount of racist comments, "the intent is obvious," he said.
The study showed that a majority of students were ambivalent to the existence of racism in Chico, with only 4.4 percent of students strongly disagreeing with the statement that racism is a problem, he said.
Dick was disturbed that students don't have a strong opinion or are ignorant to the existence of racism, he said. The study showed that 45 percent of students felt they were tolerant, but that means 55 percent are not, he said.
The most shocking statistic was that nearly 25 percent of students in the survey believe the campus pays too much attention to minority issues.
However, these results may show some sort of bias.
"When it comes to answering surveys, people know the right answer to put," he said. "It's not only that the numbers are too high, but the problem persists."
Wills spoke up when the discussion began and explained that many white people feel guilty for their history of oppressing and enslaving African Americans.
"There's a debt to be owed," he said. "I do feel responsible for the sins of the fathers."
Jennie Palmer, a north campus resident adviser, has witnessed her first-year residents making racial comments.
"They think if they do it to everyone, it's OK," she said.
Palmer wants better training for the resident advisers to handle inappropriate situations because there have been times when she was caught off-guard and had to stumble through the conversation, she said.
Tray Robinson, the diversity coordinator on campus, has a dream that someday Chico will be an environment of understanding and respect, he said.
"I don't know if we're preparing our students or ourselves to have that kind of community," he said.
He thinks diversity should be taught in every course, even math, he said.
"We are still all a part of the community of Chico," he said, "and we need to take care of each other."
Elaina Rusk can be reached at erusk@orion-online.net
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