STARs
share awareness in classrooms
By Monica Levette Clark
Daily Forty Niner
More
than 30 students at Cal State Long Beach
gathered for a day of training Sunday, at
the Students Talk About Race workshop, preparing
them to be placed as facilitators of multicultural
awareness in middle and high schools throughout
Long Beach.
The STAR program, which was founded in North
Carolina in 1980, was brought to California
in November of 1992 in response to the Los
Angeles riots after the verdict was given
in the Rodney King trial.
James Manceau Sauceda, director of the Multicultural
Center on campus, was instrumental in the
implementation of the program, which started
at CSULB with only 15 students. Since then,
the STAR program has had more than 1,600
college students become volunteers and has
placed them in 76 schools in the area.
“The sad truth is that people still have
a distorted view about humanity today,”
Sauceda said. “One of the biggest
misconceptions is that we are all segregated
and mono-cultural. We are not taught to
see things as interconnected, and if we
were, we would see that that we are all
connected in history and life.”
For eight weeks of the fall semester, the
students who attended the six hour day of
training will pair up and develop effective
and creative presentations on the subject
of cross-cultural relations. The goal of
the STAR program is to incite the awareness
of the misconceptions of race and diversity
in the minds of today’s youth.
Sauceda said that the duty of the volunteers
is to bring racial and cultural issues out
from under the rug and onto the table.
“As Dr. Martin Luther King said, ‘We are
not here to create tension, we are here
to surface the tension that already exists,”
Sauceda said.
The students who attended the workshop said
they were very interested in participating
in the STAR program.
“At my high school, segregation among people
of different backgrounds was a real issue.
I want to be able to tell these high school
students that they should get to know each
other’s culture, and not have those boundaries,”
Jennifer Salas, a music major who said she
wanted to get more information on diversity
for herself also.
Robin Marcario, a communications major,
said that as a mother she is hoping to break
away from the traditional, distorted racial
views and pass on more healthy views about
diversity to her children.
“We need to move away from the us and them
mentality, and start to see acceptance as
inclusive instead of exclusive,” Marcario
said.
Rovel Scales, a business management major,
said he wanted to do something more productive
with his extra time, instead of watching
television, and pass on knowledge to others.
“This workshop has expanded my knowledge
about cultures and I want to use it to expand
the knowledge of others,” Scales said.
Fletcher Brown, a business finance major,
said he became more interested in the STAR
program after attending the workshop. Although
he said he thinks it will be a challenge
for him to speak in front of a classroom
of high school students, he is willing to
face his fears for an important issue such
as diversity.
This week the volunteers will be given their
lists of schools they will attend to hold
the one hour long presentations, once or
twice a week. College students who are recruited
to be volunteers in the STAR program may
use it for general education credit, or
may list it as a community service on their
resumes.
The program is offered every semester and
is opened to all students from all areas
of study. For more information contact the
Multicultural Center on campus at (562)
985-8150.
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