When McCormick freshman Ralph Dorotheo first walked into the Multicultural Center last September, he was impressed by two things: the large turnout and the amount of collaboration between different multicultural groups.

“The first (event at the Multicultural Center) I went to was a barbeque during New Student Week,” he said. “I was really impressed by the influence all these groups have on campus and how they work together under the same house.”

Although community within minority groups has been consistently strong over the years, the teamwork that Dorotheo noticed among cultural organizations is new. After the restructuring of the Multicultural Affairs Division and increased participation by cultural organizations in the Coalition of Color last year, bonds between cultural groups have strengthened.

Carretta Cooke, executive director of Multicultural Student Affairs, said a sense of community both within and between cultural groups is something for which both students and officials strive.

“We are all committed within Multicultural Student Affairs as a staff to make sure that our student organizations are strong,” Cooke said.

Most student leaders of minority organizations said a sense of community is something that inevitably happens when students join a cultural group.

“(Being involved in a group) automatically calls people to feel some sort of connection,” said Alianza Co-President Alysa Handelsman, a Weinberg junior. “Of course not all Latinos are friends, but it feels like I know everyone who is involved (in Alianza) in at least some way.”

Sarah Yun, a Weinberg senior and president of Asian Pacific American Coalition, agrees with Handelsman and said a sense of community is essential for the existence of minority of organizations.

“If we are divided, nothing is ever going to get achieved on this campus,” she said.

Though cross-cultural bonds may not be as strong as those that exist within particular organizations, most minority group leaders said multicultural group unity has increased over the past year.

Handelsman said the increasing unity of the multicultural community began with the Stop the Hate campaign that emerged last fall as a response to reported hate crimes on campus.

“(The campaign) got people thinking about how important it was for minorities to unite and it got people to come together,” Handelsman said.

Many also credit the increased sense of fraternity to the structural and organization changes that occurred in the minority affairs division in the last year, such as increased participation in the Coalition of Color and bringing together the black, Latino and Asian American student offices to form a division of the Multicultural Student Affairs directed by Cooke, the former head of African American Student Affairs.

After the restructuring of the Multicultural Student Affairs department, “all multicultural groups have been communicating more often,” said Weinberg junior Ketica Guter, coordinator of For Members Only.

Weinberg senior and South Asian Student Alliance President Lakshmi Tummala hopes a strengthened relationship between all multicultural groups will create a larger community.

“There’s a lot of communication between cultural group leaders, and hopefully that will lead to more communication between the students (of different cultural groups) themselves,” she said.

Reach Allan Madrid at [email protected].

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Cultures strengthen teamwork