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CSULB
to host Voices of the Heart event
By
Daniel Weinell
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
From
8:30 a.m. until noon in the USU, Ballrooms
A-C, the Campus Climate Committee &
the Associated Student Union, with help
from the Multicultural Center, are running
Voices of the Heart. The event is designed
to bring different cultures together on
campus.
The
Multicultural Center is responsible for
many presentations on campus and, with its
own resource library, also provides many
resources for cultural needs. Cynthia Schultheis,
assistand director, said the Multicultural
Center holds conferences where students
can learn about other cultures.
The
director of the center, James Sauceda, will
also be one of the speakers at the Voices
of the Heart event. He is involved with
many different campus events. Just recently,
he moderated an interfaith conference between
Islamic students and Christian students.
Sauceda hopes this event will bring people
together, without having to have some natural
disaster first. He wants students to be
"more comfortable being uncomfortable."
Sauceda
dreams of different clubs swapping cultural
recipes and then cooking them at a picnic.
According to Sauceda, when asked the percentage
of blacks on campus, most people guess it
is somewhere between 20 and 25 percent.
Actually, that number is around 5.5 percent.
Cal State Long Beach was built on American
Indian grounds, but American Indians make
up less than 1 percent of the students.
"When you use the term 'Asian' you
are erasing 50 different cultures,"
Sauceda said.
These
shocking numbers are the reason behind the
Voices of the Heart event. The day will
start off with a speech by David Sanfilippo,
the director of Disabled Student Services.
His speech will give students a new outlook
on disability as an actual culture.
After
the first keynote speech there will be an
hour and 10 minutes of open conversation.
Students will stand in a semicircle facing
a group of students trained for this event.
The conversation topics will range greatly
from religion to racial stereotypes.
The
second half of the meeting will involve
students separating into groups. They will
get to choose a group based on areas of
interest in the previous conversation. Trained
students will monitor these mini-groups.
The entire event will be videotaped in order
to help future students. The tape will hopefully
be used in classrooms as a learning aid.
Sauceda
makes it clear that this is no ordinary
event. In the words of one of his favorites
speakers, Malcolm X, "We have to take
the issues under the rug and put them on
the table."
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