As the rain poured outside, students trickled into Bryan Jr. Auditorium on the morning of March 29 for the college’s first annual Multicultural Conference. Entitled “Guilford Through the Looking Glass,” the conference took a closer look at issues of diversity, specifically those on Guilford’s campus. “Rather than inviting others from other schools and looking at diversity issues in all of U.S. society, we wanted to focus on how multicultural issues impact life at Guilford,” said Jorge Zeballos, Latino community program coordinator and international student advisor.
The specificity to Guilford is due, in part, to the large amount of student involvement in organizing the conference.
“Last year I was approached by a group of students interested in organizing a conference engaging in the internal conversation with the Guilford community on multicultural issues,” Zeballos said.
“We really wanted this to be student-driven,” said sophomore Elena Conley, one of the student organizers. “We’ve gone to anti-racism trainings, but everything is led by adults. We wanted something from the students.”
Multicultural issues are highlighted as Guilford intensifies its work on the Strategic Long Range Plan (SLRP). Priority 3.2 of SLRP is titled Diversity and Anti-racism.
“There are so many multicultural issues on campus,” Conley said. “You can see a racial division, a class division, an athlete division, a liberal division on campus.”
According to the Diversity Plan document, “Connecting Communities and Embracing Diversity,” transformation of Guilford begins with creating awareness. “We have responsibility, not only to challenge ourselves but to challenge our institutions,” Zeballos said.
Step one of the Diversity Plan includes “conduct(ing) campus wide forums.” A forum was held on March 19 and the multicultural conference served as another information session and included a panel discussion about the Anti-Racism team.
The day-long conference featured two sessions with three workshop options. Each of the six workshops focused on a topic relevant to Guilford.
The workshop “Disabilities in College” discussed the difficulties of being disabled and in a university setting as a student or staff member.
“I think that there are a lot of not-so-obvious issues for those of us that don’t have learning disabilities,” Zeballos said.
Some of the not-so-obvious issues include the amount of people with disabilities on campus. Guilford currently has almost 400 students with disclosed disabilities. The college also has the highest number of learning disabled students in the nation for a school without a learning disability program.
“We’ve come a long way, but we’ve still got a long way to go,” said Kim Garner, disabilities services coordinator and leader of the workshop. “(Guilford) tends to do fairly well, but we still struggle.”
Other workshops, including “Reclaiming our Voices: Internalized Racial Oppression in Communities of Color,” dealt with race and class issues such as the intersection of white privilege and class status.
“(‘Reclaiming our Voices’) is a space to investigate the impact of issues, to support each other, to see how we can survive in a system that is oppressive and how we relate to each other,” Zeballos said.
The turnout for the events was less than expected. Approximately 30 Guilford students, faculty and staff attended. However, the number of attendees did not influence the effectiveness of the conference.
“Everyone that needs to be here is here,” said Sekinah Hamlin, director of multi-cultural education. “A small group of students, a small group of anyone can change the world.