Hundreds of university students from the Boston area gathered at Metcalf Hall Sunday for a daylong diversity conference. Hosted by the student group BUNITED, participants explored the theme “Get to the Root” through ongoing dialogue, workshops and cultural performances.
“We really want to provide our attendees [with] a full day to talk about what’s on their mind,” said Bejeana Breneville, the event’s co-director.
Breneville, a junior in the College of Communication, worked on a team of 17 BU students to plan this year’s conference. She helped organize 50-minute interactive workshops on a plethora of issues ranging from mass incarceration and cultural appropriation to the Muslim-American experience. Of the 18 workshops, Breneville said, 13 were student-led.
“So many people are here because they want to be able to expand their perspectives,” said Gloria Ihenetu, the BUNITED public relations and marketing committee chair. “They see that there are a lot of voices that don’t have a chance to be heard, and they want to make sure that they’re making the space for those voices to be heard. This is the best way to do so.”
Ihenetu, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, attended BUNITED’s inaugural conference her freshman year, and has worked on the committee ever since. She explained that giving students at culturally diverse universities the opportunity to learn about issues they are unfamiliar with is of the utmost importance.
Taylor Robinson, a workshop leader and BU alumna, agreed students should learn about new perspectives. Her workshop titled “Trauma for Sale?” explored the trend of people of color writing essays about their pain for admittance to universities.
She sees this frequently as a college advisor at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, a district in which students are predominantly low income and racial minorities.
“I hope that when [attendees] leave here, they’ll use what they learned to improve what’s going on around them,” Robinson said. “It’s good to be an attendee, but it’s better to be a participant.”
She said she was pleasantly surprised that the students in her workshops represented both those who had to “display their pain for a ticket to white academia” and others who simply wanted to learn about different perspectives and experiences.
Robinson said the goal of the conference is to open dialogue and teach people about diversity, especially students pursuing fields of study whose schedules wouldn’t allow room for classes on these subjects otherwise.
Naveed Ghani, a recent graduate from the Graduate Medical Sciences program at BU, was one of these attendees that came to learn about issues inaccessible to him in the classroom.
“There’s a lot of different issues and problems in this country and in the world that they’re addressing here, and there’s no easy answer to what we can do about it, so coming together and seeing everybody’s perspectives about what we see, what we think are the problems, what we think are the solutions is what drew my interest,” Ghani said.
Ghani chatted with fellow attendee Tatiana Dardompre in Metcalf Hall over lunch, after their first two workshop sessions. Dardompre, a junior at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, was one of the many participants from schools across the area.
At the tables around them, students of all races, genders and ethnicities conversed about the workshops as well as their personal lives. They hailed from a variety of colleges, including Emerson College, Tufts University, Harvard University and Wellesley College, with some students coming from as far as the University of Rhode Island.
“I’ve been thinking more about how I should take advantage of opportunities like this as a young adult, especially as a college student,” Dardompre said. “I think it’s important for me as a person of color to be inserting myself in these conversations.”
The lunch, catered by a local black-owned restaurant, was followed by a cultural show featuring a lineup of dancers, singers and spoken word artists.
Jaisun Lewinski, a recent graduate from Northeastern University, performed his original slam poem, titled “White Boy Dance Moves.” He said the piece was an attempt to combine comedic elements with the more serious issue of white privilege.
“I like to try and make people think through a specific emotion that I’m trying to tap into,” he said. “I don’t like how much intentionality behind my writing there tends to be, but it’s always there.”
After the cultural show, attendees participated in a final workshop before author and activist Feminista Jones delivered the keynote speech.
“We talk about making a change, but you can’t make a change without talking about it first,” Breneville said. “That’s what BUNITED is here for –– to give you the space to talk so that you can actually make the change.”
