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The Miami
Vol. 93, Issue 44 | April 2 - April 5, 2015
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HURRICANE
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STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI IN CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA, SINCE 1929
In terms of inclusiveness, I think UM is like those partitioned Styrofoam plates. You get a little bit of everything,
but they don’t touch – SENIOR MISCHAEL CETOUTE
Remedying race relations Campus weighs in on inclusivity, diversity BY LYSSA GOLDBERG ONLINE EDITOR
Junior Klaudius Maynard grew up in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a territory with a predominantly black population. There, Maynard was always surrounded by people who look like him and, therefore, unable to experience much diversity. He transferred to the University of Miami looking for just that. By the end of his first semester, however, Maynard noticed
he had naturally gravitated toward other students from the Caribbean – his first group of friends was from the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica. “When you get here, you realize that, for the most part, the whites still kind of hang together, the blacks still kind of hang together,” he said. Senior Mischael Cetoute said the inclusiveness of other races and ethnicities on UM’s campus works like a partitioned styrofoam plate. “You get a little bit of everything, but they don’t touch,” he said.
Cetoute sits on the Task Force to Address Black Students’ Concerns, which was assembled this spring. It consists of 10 student leaders and 14 faculty members, and is divided into subgroups to address five issues: the climate for black students on campus, enrollment and retention of black students, programming for diversity and inclusion, sensitivity and inclusivity training, and recruitment of black faculty. In addition to the task force, other areas of campus have recently brought attention to the topic of race. On Wednesday night, the Know Justice, Know Peace symposium on race, policing and social justice
featured Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, Johnetta Elzie of The Ferguson Protestor Newsletter and other leaders in the areas of race and justice. The Intercollegiate Debate Team has also been holding a series of community discussions on race, with topics of debate including whether affirmative action is necessary. “We thought that race would be a good topic because it’s current, it’s relevant, it gets people talking, and there’s differing opinions on it,” said junior Renee Reneau, who joined debate her freshman year. SEE RACIAL INTERACTION, PAGE 2