I have spent the past month and a half interviewing close to 15 students and administrators about the Call To Action document that was written and started one year ago.
My reporting included reading over documents, researching data and spending all of my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays interviewing everyone who would answer me.
First thing: thank you to all of the students and administrators who took the time to sit down and answer my questions. Special thanks goes to Greg Harrison, current Black Student Union President, who emailed me any and all information I needed for the stories.
With all that aside, I strongly commend the group that put the Call To Action document together; it was very well written and detailed.
As a minority student at the University I strongly support their stance on their demands. Each of them are a necessary feature for a University that claims it embraces diversity and inclusion.
While I support each of their demands, I do not think they will all happen anytime soon. It may actually take a different administration.
I believe that in the year this administration has had to go over this document there should be more progress than what we have seen.
None of these demands are unrealistic; the administration needs to take these students and demands seriously.
They are calling out the administration, something most students do behind their closed doors or with their friends in the union.
What I like the most is that they aren’t calling them out in a negative or rude way. They have put their ideas down on paper and explained each demand, how it can be done and why it needs to be done.
It seems to me that they are challenging the University to make changes for the sake of the students.
The administrators who run this University care about the students. They may not see everything that goes on but they truly care— no matter what we as students think.
I would agree that they have not done enough in many areas to help us as students feel comfortable enough to call the University home. When all of the racial incidents from this past year happened, I will be honest, I hesitated to call this University my school.
Although I appreciate all of the people who are affiliated with the Not In Our Town movement, for that to be the University’s response to those incidents made me furious. I did not want to claim this University; I claimed the Journalism Department and just stuck to my work.
Since then we have seen students stand up to protest against the preachers and this document has made waves. Students are changing this University for the better— I just hope the administrators are paying attention.
There are more students coming to the University and so many of them have ideas for change, similar to the students who wrote Call To Action.
Call To Action was a terrific step forward for the University and it’s even better that it was by the students. Look out, administrators, because there is more to come from this group and many more after them.
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