A Campus of Difference Workshop brings Campus and Community Members Together

By Sonia Jackson
Staff Writer

The Campus of Difference workshop brought students, faculty and community members together

Aug. 29, at the Regional Center for a lesson in diversity.

The speakers, Cynthia Martin and Paul Dorn, started the program with an activity that divided the participants into five groups. These five groups had to write down possible benefits of incorporating diversity on campus for students, faculty/professors, staff, administration and the town community. This activity allowed participants to actively move around and brainstorm aloud with each other.

Dorn hoped the 29 workshop attendees would take away three basic diversity skills, which included:

• The ability and willingness to ask questions.
• The ability and willingness to give answers.
• The ability and willingness to create an environment where #1 and #2 can occur.

“It’s the most effective way to create change and challenge assumptions,” Dorn said. The diversity skills are needed to further the workshop’s goals of examining stereotypes, assumptions and the perceptions people have of themselves and one another. These skills are also to help campus community members handle bigotry and discrimination on campus and allow them to integrate diversity into campus life, enhancing the benefits of diversity for students, staff and administration.

Through the entire workshop, audience members actively interacted with the speakers, Martin and Dorn, as well as each other. They engaged one another through activities and lively discussions concerning diversity and the different ways people identify with each other and themselves, even touching on sensitive subjects such as religion and sexual orientation.

“For me, I’ve learned a lot. I hope to take it back to the community in some form or fashion,” said Virgil Oxendine, an alumni and an office manager at Pembroke Hardware, said.

Others shared similar thoughts to Oxendine’s.

“I see this as the beginning for more collaborative programs between the university and the community,” Robert L. Canida II, director of multicultural and minority affairs, said. He also sees the program as a chance to build the groundwork for students, staff and faculty to appreciate the multitude of differences that surround not only the campus, but the greater community as well.

The Campus of Difference workshop is one of four aspects the A World of Difference Institute established as a resource to train others in the appropriate ways to address bigotry and racism, as well as promote an understanding and embracement of diversity. The A World of Difference Institute began from the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights and human relations agency.

The Campus of Difference program is specifically targeted towards faculty, students and other members of the college community. However, A World of Difference Institute has programs and workshops also designed specifically for people in the workplace, community and the classroom.