While some students were just getting back into town from Fall Break Sunday night, about 50 others were in the Union study lounge to discuss an action plan regarding the racially charged tweets.
After a silent protest where students, faculty and staff came together to put duct tape over their mouths with the phrase “call to action” written over it Wednesday afternoon, students came together Sunday night in order to decide the next step in a student-driven movement to promote cultural education in order to prevent incidents like the tweets from happening again.
Tweets suggesting the Black Student Union is prejudice against white people were sent from the Twitter handle @PatFalcon around 12 a.m. this past Monday.
The Black Student Union, Latino Student Union, VISION, World Student Association and India Student Association made a separate campaign from Not In Our Town called Call To Action. While the organizations appreciate the support from Not In Our Town, their meaning is different.
“Not In Our Town’s meaning is to make people aware and push for support from others, while Call To Action is actually putting those words into action,” said Kobe Huynh, president of World Student Association.
Anyone can join the campaign by contacting any of the organizations involved.
While there is no set plan of what will come, students came together to discuss possible ways to get the administration to help educate students on diversity and the issues that have going on with racism on campus.
“We want a better partnership and communication between students and faculty,” said Kevin Lewis, BSU president. “Not just so we are tolerated, but appreciated.”
After the open forum on Tuesday, an action plan was made for the University for any future incidents.
The action plan, as of now, calls for an investigation to immediately happen when something dealing with racism happens and for the president of Undergraduate Student Government and the Office of Equality and Diversity to release a statement to the entire University with details of what happened, results of the investigation and how the University will move forward.
Alex Solis, USG president, did not attend the event but said he believes the campaign is important in order for everyone can be aware.
“This just proves that one person, one voice can make something like this happen and affects everyone,” Solis said.
While Solis and David Neely, USG vice president, were not fully informed about the first open forum, they plan on attending more once a better line of communication is met.
“Once there is a set time, date and place for these meetings, [Neely and I] will absolutely be apart of them. This is important,” Solis said. “It’s simple awareness and education that will pull everyone together.”
The Call To Action campaign is not strictly for multicultural students, faculty and staff but is geared toward the entire community as a whole in order to educate everyone about the issues.
“We want to unify everyone in order to figure out what we will do,” Lewis said. “We just want to bring more cultural education to the curriculum because the University should be living up to values of diversity.”
The next meeting will be hosted Oct. 28 at the Union in the second floor study area.
