Hundreds of students packed College Library in December chanting “hands up, don’t shoot” in response to racial discrimination in Madison. Tuesday, members of the UW-Madison community filled Varsity Hall in Union South to engage in a campus-wide dialogue on diversity and inclusion.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank kicked off the event, referencing previous diversity events on campus including the Diversity Plan and “Black Lives Matter.”
“I recognize the racial prejudice and inequity in our community and our nation continues to create deep scars,” Blank said at the event.
The nearly 400 attendees sat at round tables meant to facilitate conversation, switching tables every 20 minutes to meet a large sample of guests, ranging from retired professors to undergraduate and graduate students.
Dean of Students Lori Berquam encouraged one participant at each table to take notes and ask questions off a prompt sheet to facilitate conversation.
Some students say enough was not accomplished at the event, such as UW-Madison junior Fathiya Issa. There was “a lot of talk, but not action” Issa said, according to a release from the UW-Madison diversity and inclusion website.
Absent from the event was the student group About Race UW, who encouraged minimal student participation at Tuesday’s discussion due to what they perceived as a lack of consideration from the university.
“They didn’t include us in any of the planning of this event, that’s supposed to be about a student-led movement,” facilitator of the “Black Lives Matter” College Library demonstration Amani Alexander said, adding she thought scheduling the discussion in mid-afternoon may have prevented students from attending due to class conflicts.
About Race UW hosted their own student diversity forum Tuesday night, an event which they moved up from a later date in order to “keep the ball rolling,” Alexander said.
While word of the “boycott” spread, Interim Vice Provost and Chief Diversity Officer Patrick Sims acknowledged the group’s absence.
“What they’re doing is actually what we want to have happen,” he said in the release. “They’re mobilizing in a way that makes sense for them.”
Alexander said students need to “know what they are fighting for” once they reach out to the administration for further diversity implementation on campus.
Sims said he plans to use data collected from the diversity and inclusion event as a “bank of ideas” to draw from and integrate into the Diversity Plan, a campus-wide proposal to increase diversity throughout the community, agreed upon by faculty, staff and students.
“I’ve described these as incubation conversations: percolations, ideas of the next steps we can take,” Sims said in the release. “We look to have more people involved in ongoing discussions. This is only the beginning.”
