Monday, September 20, 1999
Role Playing
Rick Rose succeeds David Fletcher as assistant VP for student affairs
Former senior consultant becomes environmental safety division director
Financial expert named head of internal auditing
Tea for Two Universities
Women’s Studies Program Reception
Newsmakers
Administrative Changes
Pillars of the community
Director discusses his vision for Minority Services and Programs
By Beth Roberts

Sherwood Thompson came to UGA this past February to direct the Office of Minority Services and Programs. He had directed the Office of Minority Affairs and Multicultural Resource Center at the University of Kansas since 1991. Columns discussed with him the support his office provides for minority students at UGA.

Columns: What are your plans for the office?
Thompson: I envision this office developing into a full-service student-development organization, with four basic pillars.
The first one is academic enhancement. We provide students with whatever resources they need to be successful in their academic pursuits.
Number two, we build multicultural skills, to help minority as well as majority students be competitive in the marketplace after graduation. A polarized community produces a person unequipped to negotiate his or her way in society, a person who is monocultural, parochial. And we want to help students break down those barriers and develop relationship-building skills.
The third thing is to develop an interdisciplinary research center to look at ethnic minorities in Southern colleges. The purpose is to go beyond the knee-jerk comments people make about minorities. We need scientific research to determine what factors cause students to accept or decline enrollment, what programs would bring minorities into the pipeline.
And the fourth area is development. I see a tremendous untapped resource among the minority community--friends and former students of the university. I would like to encourage people to support minority-education initiatives.
Those four pillars support a lot of programs and activities, involved in every aspect of the university. It’s critical that we send a signal that the minority-services program is an integral part of the university, not just a satellite for minorities. We can work together to enhance the experience of all students. I think positive contact is the key.

Columns: In the course of the current debate over affirmative action, some commentators have suggested that black students may be uncomfortable at the University of Georgia. What’s your view?
Thompson: I don’t think they’re uncomfortable at all. I’ve talked to hundreds of minority students--black students as well as other minority group members. The students I’ve encountered are proud to be affiliated with this institution. They’re very motivated. I haven’t sensed a student who was bitter or mad--or who feels stigmatized because they’re at UGA.
The students who are at UGA selected UGA. Why would you select a college where you were going to be miserable?
Something else we have to remember is that these young men and women are not like the generation that I grew up in. I grew up in a segregated generation. These young men and women have always lived in an integrated world. Their neighborhood--and their neighborhood schools--may have been predominantly white or black or Hispanic, but by and large their external world is not the same as my world was.
I am often asked what we do to ease the transition of blacks to this campus--and I explain that we do very little sensitivity work, instead we just welcome them to campus. They are prepared in many ways for the college experience.

Columns: How do the students you’ve talked with feel about the affirmative-action debate?
Thompson: They’re concerned about what this debate says to prospective minority students. They want greater numbers of minority students on campus, and they are tired of being the target of racial debates about their access to college. Many minority students want to get involved in finding innovative strategies to attract and retain academically sound students.
I would like to start an early-intervention program, so that we can identify young men and women at the seventh-grade level who have aspirations to attend the University of Georgia. You have to have aspiration and preparation if you’re going to attend the University of Georgia--but you don’t develop that aspiration in the 12th grade.
We can target the counties with the largest concentration of minority students and identify the students who are interested in attending college. With corporate support we can send UGA students into those districts to encourage those students to take college preparation seriously.
It is important for students at the secondary school level to take responsibility for their education--and a community of parents, teachers and UGA students can pull that together. Young men and women of all ethnic backgrounds have hard choices today. Popular culture sends a very destructive message to young people--it doesn’t encourage education.

Columns: How about other ethnic minorities at UGA?
Thompson: We work with the Hispanic student association, an East Asian student association, an Asian-American student organization and a West Indian student group. We lend technical support and advice, provide resources and tools to develop their programs on campus.
As resources are available, we hope to expand our staff with someone with a Hispanic background, since that’s one of the fastest-growing minority groups in the state. We’re all trained in this area, and I don’t think people have to be Hispanic, Asian or African American to interact with members of those ethnic groups. Nevertheless, in the initial stages of trying to develop a sense of community, we’d like to have participation from someone who lives the Hispanic experience.

Columns: This office seems to be an entry point for minority students.
Thompson: The purpose is to provide a support network. But we want to simultaneously present the culture to the wider community. Diversity is our strength, but it’s not our strength if we pigeonhole it and let people be parochial. We encourage students to get involved with the institution--not to restrict their participation to one ethnic organization.
We do not serve every minority student on campus--but if they ever need our services, they know we are here. They may never need our services--many don’t, because they have a good support system and excellent preparation.
That’s one of our intangible strengths. We are an insurance policy for minority students on campus.
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