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Columns::January 21, 2003
Federal judge will give annual Holmes-Hunter Lecture
New lecture series marks Founders’ Day
UGA honored for ‘transforming’ its school counseling program
Inaugural research grants awarded
Teaching Academy inducts new members
Power supply
Professor works to promote geography to ‘global’ community
Retirees
Kudos
Minority recruitment at UGA
Floored by his own chair
Campus News
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| Linton Mann III was one of the UGA student-presenters at the National Issues Forum briefing at the Carter Library on Martin Luther King Day. He talked about his CURO project with the Survey Research Center. (Photo by Peter Frey) |
Common ground
Talking about race: UGA students explore sensitive topics
By Sharron Hannon
shannon@uga.edu
Finding common ground for action on racial and ethnic issues--like affirmative action, profiling, bilingual education--isn’t easy. Even discussing them in a group setting can be a challenge.
That’s what students in UGA’s Honors Program discovered fall semester when they participated in the National Issues Forum on “Racial and Ethnic Tensions: What Should We Do?”
The topic was chosen by student peer advisers in the Honors Program, who then went through a training session prior to moderating the forums, which involved all first-year students in the Honors Program. In total, more than 400 Honors students participated in small-group, student-led sessions, which were among the hundreds of NIF forums on race that took place in a variety of settings around the country in 2001 and 2002 and will continue in 2003.
“Universities in a democracy have a responsibility to provide safe space to consider societal issues that impact the quality of life,” says Pam Kleiber, associate director of the Honors Program. “The National Issues Forum provides a non-partisan opportunity to consider current issues in a thoughtful and balanced, deliberative way. We want Honors students to have the opportunity to articulate their opinions and perspectives on important issues and to hear other opinions and perspectives that may differ from theirs.”
The student moderators used an NIF issue book to guide discussion. Forum participants examined three different approaches to racial issues--focusing on what unites rather than divides people, acknowledging and accepting differences, taking an active role in finishing the job of integration--and discussed the dangers, drawbacks and trade-offs of each.
“People had a great appreciation for the discussion,” says Satya Patel, a junior double-majoring in finance and public health, who served as one of the moderators. “It’s a topic that weighs heavily on all of our minds, but there’s an unwritten rule that you just don’t discuss these things. I think the students saw it as an opportunity to share their viewpoints and be educated on what others thought.”
Patel and four other moderators shared what they learned through the forums as part of an NIF briefing at the Jimmy Carter Library on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. During the briefing, John Doble of Doble Research Associates presented findings of a new NIF report that qualitatively analyzed what happened in the community forums on race in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The report is based in part on responses to questionnaires completed by more than 3,500 participants, and free copies can be downloaded at www.nifi.org. Among the findings: participants overwhelmingly agreed that the key to reducing inequality is education.
An additional presentation at the Carter Library was made by Linton Mann III, a UGA junior from Marietta double-majoring in political science and speech communications, who worked with UGA’s Survey Research Center on recent statewide polls involving questions on the new state flag and affirmative action. Mann is in his second year with UGA’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities, which offers undergraduates a chance to engage in research work with faculty.
With SRC director Jim Bason as his mentor, Mann prepared questions for the spring 2002 Georgia Poll to measure reaction to the state flag change and the potential impact it might have on the fall elections. In the fall 2002 poll, he posed questions on affirmative action programs--learning in the process just how divided people are when it comes to yes and no answers on issues involving race.
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