The question of students' roles as members of an ethnic group, members of the University community and as individuals was a recurrent topic of discussion at the third annual Spectrum Race Relations Forum.
A panel of 11 students, leaders and representatives from a number of minority and other campus groups spent two hours exploring and occasionally intensely arguing issues of race on campus before an attentive audience, which primarily consisted of minority students.
Extensively debated was the extent to which cultural groups can represent the problems and beliefs of their ethnic members. Many panelists agreed with Malcolm Yeung, a first-year graduate student in chemistry and co-founder of the Asian Social Organization, when he said that "personal interaction and race relations are two different issues."
"...I don't believe groups have consciousness. Individuals have consciousness," said Trinity senior Perham Gorji, a founder of Open Forum, a publication of student opinion.
In that vein, Gorji criticized The Chronicle for quoting cultural group presidents whenever any members of that group are involved in campus political or social action. Trinity senior Terry Harlin, a reporter for the independent conservative campus publication The Duke Review since its founding, agreed, saying that such a practice leads to "politicization of certain viewpoints" by campus cultural groups that claim to represent their entire constituency.
The panel also discussed the role that The Duke Review plays on campus. Bermudez referred to the paper as a substandard version of the conservative National Review, claiming that the staff members "print the same article every year--[they] attack me and `Shalamar Jeffries' [a name the Review uses to refer to Shavar Jeffries]. I don't know any Shalamar Jeffries."
Jeffries, a Trinity junior and president of the Black Student Alliance, also sat on the panel.
Harlin defended the Review's past attacks on various groups as purely political.
"I don't think it's a negative thing that we get railed at in The Duke Review," said Trinity senior Sarah Dodds, co-founder of Spectrum House. "It shows us that we're on the right track."
The roles of greek organizations in campus race relations were also discussed. Trinity senior and Delta Gamma president Tory Haljun quietly related, in the midst of a late-conference furor over the single-color greek and selective houses, a story about a black student who had rushed and joined her sorority, only to deactivate her membership after she received mail deriding her as a traitor and as a sellout to her race for not joining a historically black organization.
Discussion of how whites could play a role in minority groups prompted repeated criticisms by panelists concerning the lack of white students in the audience, as well as strong remarks from the floor.
"I think we all on this campus have become comfortable in our own little spheres--spheres of influence, spheres of comfort," said Trinity senior Kathy Davis, Duke Student Government vice-president of community interaction.
But Trinity sophomore Bill Bermont, a white student who introduced himself as a member of both Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and BSA, responded to an comment Davis made earlier that, as a majority on campus, she has never found herself the only white person in a room.
"I have been the only white person in a room," Bermont said. "I have felt nothing butÉ totally welcome."
However, many panelists eventually recognized that the people who attended the forum were eager to improve race relations because they had the motivation to come out and discuss the issues at hand. Rather, they said a telling absence was the average University student who may not care as much about campus diversity and race relations. "How do we reach that person?" Dodds asked. "Do we even need to?"
Jeffries offered up a suggestion: "Go to somebody who's not in this room and explain what's going on."
Several campus cultural groups and DSG cosponsored the event.
member a favorable impression of the whole situation. "I was impressed by--compared to other years--the larger and more diverse audience, and the thoughtfulness and articulate nature of the comments," said Janet Dickerson, vice-president for student affairs. "Maybe these discussions should take place more often."
The forum was sponsored by BSA, Mi Gente, the Interfraternity Council, DSG, the Asian Student Association, the Students of the Caribbean Association, the Panhellenic Council and Dia, the South Asian Association of Duke University.
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