UND President Robert Kelley meets with community members at Wilkerson Commons to discuss the state of diversity at UND. Photo by Natosha Lund/The Dakota Student

The UND Multicultural Student Services center joined forces with the Black Student Association and African Student Union to hold a discussion Thursday on diversity.

A number of people were in attendance, including UND President Robert Kelley, and members of various on-campus organizations such as the UND Women’s Center and UND Counseling Center.

“We are hoping tonight’s dialogue … is going to be about UND, this campus and also this community,” President of Black Student Association Lauren Chapel said.

Sandra Mitchell, the associate vice president for diversity and inclusion, said the event was held simply to voice concerns about diversity issues on campus.

“We are trying to figure out the underlying problem,” Mitchell said during the opening remarks.

The dialogue was set up at various tables in which small discussion groups sat together to answer a series of questions about diversity. The group discussed the answers and wrote their thoughts on paper, followed by each table sharing their thoughts with the entire room.

One of the questions was “What does diversity look like at UND?” After discussing, the consensus was UND does not have as much diversity as it seems.

Often, there are small pockets of diverse students that stick together, with minimal interaction with the students who are from North Dakota, a place that often lacks ethnic diversity.

Another observation was that sometimes other students and even faculty can unintentionally make negative comments toward international students and various people of color.

People can often ignorant and uneducated of other cultures and ask insensitive questions, participants said. They should be educated about what is appropriate and what is rude when interacting with people from outside of North Dakota.

Other questions included some positive experiences of diversity and multiculturalism on the UND campus, along with the negative as well.

UND does offer various programs and services on campus to help bring up its diversity rating, including the multicultural center, BSA and ASU, to name a few. Despite these options, there is still no LGBTQ resource center offered on the UND campus.

Some negative experiences included people of power, such as faculty, conveying negative messages to students by skimming over a section of a chapter that is about a specific culture or place while there is a student who belongs to that culture sitting in class.

Some said tour guides have been overheard telling tour groups visiting campus that there isn’t anything important on the third floor of the Memorial Union, when in fact many of the diversity resources are located up there, including the multicultural center and veteran services.

The consensus of the night was that it is important the tour guides convey the message that there are important places located on the Union’s third floor so the prospective students of UND know that those resources are available. Measures should also be taken to advertise those resources to current students as well, as some go over a year without even knowing about them.

On a predominantly white campus, some said students in minority groups can feel marginalized. Many students brought up during the discussion that it is very important to bring the discussion forward, since talking about it is the first step to understanding.

Many also added that even though diversity can be a sensitive topic, it shouldn’t be, and that we are all capable of learning common courtesy and being sensitive to other cultures and other people, even if they look or act different than dominant culture.

The Multicultural Student Services center is located on the third floor of the Memorial Union and is open to all students. Its hours on Monday to Thursday are 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on Friday from  8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It can be reached by email at [email protected]

Journey Gontjes is a features writer for The Dakota Student.

She can be reached at [email protected]