Frustrated multicultural students will meet with administrators for the first time this quarter on March 9 to discuss the lack of progress to address problems since the the Multicultural Center was reorganized last year.

In spring 2004 the center was reorganized to develop a new organization for multicultural student affairs. Administrators restructured the department, merging black, Latino and Asian American offices into one umbrella student affairs division. As part of the change, Carretta Cooke changed her position as African American Student Affairs director to executive director for Multicultural Student Affairs.

Students met with Cooke and Vice President for Student Affairs William Banis in a heated forum Fall Quarter to voice their concerns about the restructuring. Administrators suggested a student advisory board designed to oversee and initiate change in the Multicultural Center. Administrators also proposed developing a new MCC mission statement. One quarter later, neither of these initiatives have formed.

“At first everyone was so much more gung-ho, and I now feel like they’ve really sucked the life out of us,” said Medill junior Janet Kim, co-vice-president of Pan-Asian student group Asian Pacific American Coalition. “It’s like a game of running us down.”

Despite some student concern, Cooke said the MCC is making progress even though the student advisory board and mission statement have not been established. She said she is focusing on creating an advisory board that encompasses students, faculty and MCC staff. Cooke also said the goals and objectives of the MCC mission statement for the following school year will be discussed this spring and summer.

“We’re still in the planning stages,” Cooke said. “We’re a new and fledgling department. Things don’t happen overnight. They take a year to a year and a half.”

‘really disappointed’

But students are still waiting.

According to students, administrators also said at the fall dialogue they would continue to meet with students before Winter Break. They never met. The date of the next dialogue has been pushed back multiple times throughout Winter Quarter, said Weinberg sophomore Amir Siddiqui, Multicultural Students Affairs’ Associated Student Government senator.

“Lots of members are really disappointed with how things are going in the Multicultural Center,” Siddiqui said.

Cooke said it was up to the students to plan the date and March 9 was the first time they could all meet.

But students said they feel as if the MCC has neglected their opinion in developing the new umbrella organization.

Student leaders wanted to establish focus groups that would ask students how they wanted a student advisory board to operate, but administrators told them they wanted to forego the student input and implement the board right away, Siddiqui said.

“Over Winter Break they told us that they would send out a proposal that they had been working on about the structure, relevance and goals of the board,” Siddiqui said. “But it was never sent out. Today we still have never seen a copy of it.”

Weinberg junior Aliya Faust, a member of black student alliance For Members Only, said every year administrators plan dialogue meetings right before vacations, killing the issue with the time gap.

“It makes us feel like things are being brushed under the rug and they really don’t care,” Faust said.

frustration brewing

The lack of a board and regular meetings aren’t the only student frustrations. Many students said issues with the administration is nothing new in the multicultural community.

While organizing the Diversity Symposium, student planners clashed with Cooke and their graduate student advisor, Carolyn Oldham, over the budget and arrangements. This year there was more restriction in planning the event, said Leah Hsu, a Weinberg senior who served as director of the symposium and has been involved with the conference for three years.

“All of us (organizers) have been in and out of the MCC- or Black House-related organizations for a while, so all of us were surprised because it definitely wasn’t past policy,” Hsu said.

Problems with retention have plagued Multicultural Student Affairs, angering students with the instability of constant turnover.

None of NU’s recent minority directors — Lupita Temiquel of Latino/Hispanic Student Affairs, Dimple Patel of Asian and Asian American Student Affairs and James Britt of African American Student Affairs — have stayed more than two years. This winter MCC staff hired Tedd Vanadilok as Asian American Student Affairs director — the first permanent hire since all three minority directors resigned.

The March 9 dialogue may or may not bring the answers students want to hear. But Janet Kim of APAC said she is determined to leave with some real, concrete plans of action.

“I want really want see things put into play before I leave,” Kim said. “I want to know what we’re doing and all time we’ve put into this is going to be purposeful.”

Reach Kendra Marr at [email protected].