For decades seeds of social change of taken root because of student protests on college campuses just this month protesting students at the University of Missouri succeeded in gaining massive support to fight campus racism last spring the University of Oklahoma received national scrutiny because of a racist chant by two fraternity members
That went viral this year the university has put into practice the words conveyed last year by oh you protesters not on my campus when this video went viral last fall showing members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity singing a racist chant shock waves reverberating across the nation University of Oklahoma
President David Boren reacted swiftly he joined student protesters in the early morning hours after the video release called for zero tolerance of racism and shut down the fraternity within 24 hours this has broken my heart that this could happen on our campus we have such a strong community people respect each
Other this is not representative our our students our President President David L bore and responded so quickly and he didn’t wait around to get what the lawyers you know advised him to do he didn’t wait around to see what public opinion would say he immediately stood
With students and said not on our campus Warren appointed former state senator Jabbar shumate as vice president for the university community to institute diversity rules and programs across campus each of our colleges have appointed a diversity officer that reports to the Dean and I’m working with each college to to do regular diversity
And inclusion trainings beginning this year each freshman student is required to take five hours of what is called diversity experience training student Vivian Tyson says it’s not just about race its sexual orientation its religion it’s you know ethnicity it’s just different belief systems you know if you
Believe the sky is green then why do you believe that it’s okay for you to believe that in even though I don’t have to even though I might not believe the same thing I still it’s it’s taught me tolerance I guess you can say Tyson is a freshman
Says she has not experienced racism Nou so it’s been the exact opposite and what people would expect from coming to owe you senior Morgan Hornsby has had a different experience on campus only minority sent in the class of 200 people or it’s only five of you are in a class
Of 250 you know you don’t realize that until you are that when minority person or it’s time to break off in groups and nobody wants to be your partner and because of her race Hornsby has felt stereotyped but people blatantly think that you know I’m here either because
I’m Ashley or because I’m just african-american student and I’m meeting a used quota Hornsby works in the diversity office alongside junior Savannah Jung Jung believes the diversity training is starting to work it seems like there’s more freedom to discuss whereas maybe before their didn’t feel like everyone could just
Kind of openly discuss the different things that were going on and now it’s just an easy conversation to have shumate believes president borns words and actions following the racist chant have actually drawn more minorities 20 you but I’m really happy to say that this year we saw a ten percent increase
In african-american students in our student body from the previous year and we have the largest african-american class since 2012 to be admitted in this year’s freshman class the university is still sixty-seven percent caucasian and shumate says the university has more work to do when it comes to making the campus more diverse
At Oklahoma State University the division of institutional diversity has been in place for more than a decade dr. Jason Kirksey is the vice president in charge of diversity since fall of 2009 we’ve had an eighty-nine percent increase and the number of diverse students enrolled here at OSU that
Certainly changes the look and the feel of the campus Kirksey says it’s a graduation requirement for students to take a semester three hour course in diversity curtsy says OSU actively recruit students staff and faculty since fall of 2010 we’ve had about a forty percent increase of total faculty in the
Classrooms with black faculty for example in 2010 we had 21 black faculty in the classroom this fall we had 36 which is about a seventy percent increase despite OSU’s progress Kirksey says there are still concerning incidents on campus
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