Students of all backgrounds can find common ground at Duke-and not just at the fall retreat that bears that name.
That is the message officers of the Center for Race Relations hope to get out through a series of events the group is hosting this week. CRR Week kicked off with Monday's annual Unity Through Diversity dinner, presented by the Multicultural Center.
"We as an organization are just trying to be as publicized as possible," said junior Ben Adams, CRR co-president. "We don't want to be seen just as the group that appears for Common Ground."
Other events to be hosted by CRR committees include a barbecue held Wednesday by Students to Unite Duke, a screening and discussion of "Borat" led by Dialogues on Race Relations the same night and Beneath the Blue, a retreat held from Friday to Sunday.
As sharply dressed students, faculty and administrators milled outside the Von Canon rooms in the Bryan Center just before the dinner Monday night, CRR Co-President Albert Osueke, a junior, explained that CRR Week had been an inconsistent event in the past.
Osueke said he hoped the series would elicit interest from a wide spectrum of people and create a higher profile for the still-young CRR-one of many campus groups that grew out of Professor Tony Brown's public policy class, Enterprising Leadership.
"We are constantly trying to draw in people who aren't part of the CRR crowd," Osueke said. "Our organization has been branded as sort of this peace-y group, but we're for all the students at Duke."
Junior Boyu Hu, co-director of STUD, said his group-in its role as the CRR's social affiliate-would provide a good forum for students to hobnob with the CRR executive board at the barbecue.
"When we throw a party we like to have different races, sexualities, genders represented," Hu said. "It's not so much about race as it is about the human race. For us to throw all kinds of different events is exactly what the CRR is all about."
CRR is bringing back their Beneath the Blue event-which did not occur last year in the wake of the lacrosse case. Founded as Sole Search in 2004, the retreat was renamed Beneath the Blue in 2005.
This year, the weekend will focus less on self-exploration and identity than in the past and will instead examine power structures inside and outside the University, said co-director Ankit Shrivastava, a junior.
He said the event is typically smaller than Common Ground, hosting approximately 25 students and facilitators.
"The mission of the CRR is to give everybody a forum to discuss the issues that are important to them," Shrivastava said. "This definitely does that. Beneath the Blue is the culminating event for CRR week. All of these things are building toward a discussion that we're going to have."
Multicultural Center Director Julian Sanchez, the CRR's advisor, said the CRR already attracts a wide range of students through its many activities on campus.
"CRR Week can only help," he said.
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