T-shirts, race at center of forum

By Erin Chambers

Students milled around the dimly-lit Williman Room looking for seats and friendly faces prior to the start of Tuesday's open forum on multiculturalism, a meeting intended to open discussion of the previous week's racially-charged comments about the Multicultural Center posted on the Dogears Web site forum.

Moderator and Assistant Director of the Center for Student Leadership Jennifer Acosta tentatively encouraged students to participate with "open hearts and respectful hearts" as she introduced a panel of seven MCC and two Associated Students representatives.

Despite initial concerns, fewer seats and more friendly faces turned out at the two-hour town hall-style meeting, as students calmly discussed the now infamous T-shirts and why the MCC seeks a greater presence on the Santa Clara campus.

When sophomore Jasper Seldin questioned the motive for placing expressionless white faces amidst smiling colored faces on the MCC shirts, At-large Representative Mayka Mei clarified the shirt's intended meaning.

"The blank faces are the people of a colored society who do not embrace every individual culture, ethnicity, sexuality (and) gender," Mei said. "And the colors, we wanted them to be expressions of what vibrant society can be when people embrace different cultures and ethnicities. That's the message of our T-shirts." Mei is a designer at The Santa Clara.

Manuel Perez, director of the MCC, also responded calmly when Seldin asked why the MCC wouldn't consider changing the shirts when they realized so many students interpreted them as being racist toward Caucasians.

"We're sorry there was a misunderstanding about the T-shirt, but we're not sorry that it was created," Perez said. "If anything, this is the first time a forum on any multicultural issue or topic of racism or discrimination or anything has happened for quite a while at this level."

The orderly, calm outcome was unexpected to many of the students, administrators, faculty, photographers and reporters who crammed all four corners of the room, some spilling out into the patio, most of whom had read the controversial postings on Dogears.

"Those 'See Me' shirts were so racist, with the white faces singled out and made to look expressionless next to the smiling faces of color. Any center that promotes that sort of bigotry should not be a part of this campus," one person said in a Jan. 22 Dogears posting.

Another posting referred to the MCC as "minorities cultivating communism."

If the authors of the postings were present at forum, they did not step forward, even as the discussion transitioned into more general remarks regarding multiculturalism on a campus that is nearly 60 percent white, 20 percent Asian, 14 percent Hispanic and two percent black, according to the student records department.

"When you put that stuff out there, people talk, but they're not here," ethnic studies professor Ramon Chacon said, rising from his chair and gesturing to the room in reference to the authors of the controversial Dogears postings.

Participants in the Dogears message board acted anonymously.

Seldin was the only individual at the forum to admit he had posted messages in response to the MCC question, but he said none of his was those containing the heated language or accusations which sparked much of the current controversy on and around campus.

Like Chacon, Seldin prompted the authors of what he described as the 'hate-filled' material to rise and state their position. No one came forward.

Instead, a dozen or so of the roughly 200 people in attendance came one-by-one to the lone microphone in the middle of the room to speak about their experiences with the MCC.

Roey Rahmil, a freshman political science major, described feelings of hostility between the MCC and the greater Santa Clara community.

"I don't see why the sort of 'us versus them' mentality always comes to the forefront when compromise and cooperation and just mutual dialogue and discourse can solve things in a better manner," Rahmil said.

Junior Shana Clevett, who sits on the programming board of the MCC, spoke directly to many students' concerns throughout the night, often winning laughs and applause from the crowd for her blunt responses.

"I'm white," Clevett said, as she began to describe her first experience walking into the MCC. "The director said come to me, follow me into my office, and I walked in. And the only person who made me feel uncomfortable in the room was myself, because for the first time, I had to pay attention to the fact that my skin color is white. My entire life I didn't have to deal with it until I walked into that room."

Red-haired sophomore Pat Green, the only one who raised his hand when someone asked who had never been inside the MCC, said he wasn't exactly sure why he hadn't ventured inside yet.

"My background is basically a cultural wasteland," Green said to sympathetic laughter from the crowd. "So stepping into the MCC might help. I guess I'm learning a lot about the struggle in general."

After nearly two hours, attendees trickled out as panel members announced upcoming multicultural events.

"Any time you can bring a group of people together to talk about issues related to diversity is a success," Jon Gray, director of the Center for Student Leadership, which advises the MCC, said. "I wish that people who had expressed concerns with MCC on Dogears would have had a stronger voice, and I applaud the MCC for their efforts in bringing the community together."

Seldin rose one last time to admit that his mind had been changed over the course of the forum, and he now understood the meaning and the value of the shirts.

"But you're in here," freshman Rosa Linda King said. "What about them out there?," referring to the greater Santa Clara community not in attendance.

Gray whispered under his breath at the back of the room. "One person at a time."