Latest SGA roundtable focuses on diversity

At least 90 student-organization representatives attended the Student Government Association’s second roundtable meeting for the fall semester.

Focusing on VCU organizations and multiculturalism, Napoleon Peoples, director of multicultural student affairs, asked the organizational leaders how often they interact with a person of another ethnic, racial and gender group.

“Cultural diversity is an ongoing process,” Peoples told the leaders at the meeting, advising them that to be a culturally competent person they must understand their own bias and work to decrease the bias.

Since Peoples said he’s studied cultures throughout the world, he knows about different cultures. Whenever he travels, he said, he tries to go off the beaten path so he can understand and learn about the people of that particular region.

“Working with the multicultural festival for the last three years – going into the fourth – I’ve watched students work together and cross cultures,” he said, explaining that he’s watched them try to build a dynamic system. He told the group that he has seen differences and nuances occur when people of different cultures come together.

Joyvan L. Malbon, SGA’s vice president, also suggested that organizations need to interact more.

“In fact, what some organizations don’t know is that the organizations that they pass the opportunity of knowing are the ones who might be members of organizations who have control over their budgets, reservations and much more,” she said.

The vice president recommended that groups go outside their comfort zone to interact more with each other.

For instance, she said that the Muslim Student Association demonstrates this by conducting a fast-a-thon so the entire university community can participate. Every year the MSA sponsors this charity project.

When Ali Faruk, ex-officio MSA member, spoke at the beginning of the roundtable meeting, he asked all students to fast for one day so someone else won’t have to.

Malbon agreed with Faruk.

“If more organizations would structure events for more people to attend, then I would say that we are taking a step toward becoming more culturally aware.”