A new generation of SA leaders is taking on the issue of campus diversity.

In keeping with the national trend of college politics, there has been a positive shift in diversity within Syracuse University’s Student Association, according to members of the organization. Despite the organization’s success, SA is having trouble uniting the different student groups on campus.

This year’s SA presidential candidates all said they believe diversity encompasses more than just race and culture. All three represent diverse backgrounds themselves, including being members of minority groups. Duane Ford is African American. Ivan Rosales and Boris Gresely are Latino.

But all three agree that ethnicity isn’t the only thing that diversity encompasses.

“Everyone in their own way is diverse,” Rosales said. “It’s not just cultural; it’s about your background, your sexual orientation, your socioeconomic status. The university has a long history of embracing diversity. You see that and it draws you here, and it draws diverse students who think diversity is important.”

Allie Curtis, current SA president, said having people in SA from different backgrounds helps the organization represent the student body.

“Having different views and different backgrounds benefits us all in the end,” Curtis said. “The best way we can serve the campus is by having a diverse group within SA.”

Having diversity in a school’s student government is critical, said Butch Oxendine, the executive director of the American Student Government Association. He said it’s important for a governing body to be a reflection of the people it represents.

“Not all of your students are one race or gender or ethnicity, so you want to have a student government that looks like the students they represent,” Oxendine said.

He said the best way to incorporate diversity is not by having quotas for representatives of an ethnicity or gender, but by having representatives actively talking to their peers.

Oxendine added that the ASGA constantly does research on student governments across the country to see what types of students are involved at each school. He said its most recent data from the 2011-12 academic year shows 52 percent of student government members are women. This is an increase from the 2003-04 study, which showed only 48 percent of members were women.

The data showed that close to 60 percent of student government presidents were male, but that number decreased by almost 6 percent since 2004.

Oxendine said the group also studies which ethnic groups are involved in student government. The latest studies show that 11 percent of student body presidents are African American. This number has grown significantly since the organization began doing research, he said.

Diversity within SA has changed in the last few years, and Curtis and Ford have witnessed it firsthand.

Curtis, who is focused on getting more women involved in student government, said she noticed a clear gender gap when she first joined the organization.

“It was really glaring when I came to Syracuse and joined SA,” Curtis said. “I remember standing up before the assembly and being like, ‘Well, there’s two women in the assembly.’ I just thought it was interesting there weren’t very many women involved at all.”

Curtis said she has studied the involvement of women in student government, and found the main issue was that women were not running. She worked to bring “Elect Her” to campus, an initiative that encourages and trains women to run for student government and future political offices.

The gap between the number of men and women involved in student government has decreased at SU, Curtis said. She added that women make up nearly one-third of SA. She also said the organization has gone from seeing almost all male cabinets to seeing women who are involved.

All three current vice presidential candidates are women, something Gresely said shows real progress toward getting a wider range of people involved.

“Women leaders are necessary. They bring a different perspective and have what it takes to move an organization forward,” Gresely said.

When Ford, the current vice president of SA, joined the association his freshman year, he remembered it being “overwhelmingly white.”

“Now when I look at SA, it’s like walking into a rainbow,” Ford said. “There’s just so many different types of people. Class standing, geographically, socioeconomically, racially, we have so much diversity now in SA.”

Oxendine, the executive director of ASGA, said the best way to get more diverse groups involved in student government is making the organization relevant.

“The first step if you want more people and different backgrounds is to analyze if what you’re doing is tangible and real,” Oxendine said.

Even with diversity increasing within SA, all three candidates have discussed the issue of diversity and self-segregation on campus during their campaigns.

For all three candidates, self-segregation meant that students were not reaching out to those outside of their close group of friends.

Gresely said taking on the issue of self-segregation is difficult because it happens beyond the campus. But he said the way to start is by looking for something students all have in common.

“The way you tackle self-segregation is by first understanding that we’re all students at SU,” Gresely said. “Regardless of our socioeconomic backgrounds or the color of our skin, we all have that one common thing, and that’s that we’re students at SU and we all bleed orange.”

He added that for SA to begin working on the issue of self-segregation, it’s important to be inclusive of different types of people on campus, and to realize that each student has different interests.

Rosales said a challenge of preventing self-segregation is that progress is not easily measurable. But he said that should not deter SA from tackling the issue, adding that it’s important to take preventative measures against self-segregation by actively promoting diversity.

Ford said a difficulty of approaching self-segregation is that in some cases, people have to change their mindset.

“I think to take on the issue of self-segregation on campus you have to change the way all of us view diversity, whether it’s race, culture, ethnic, socioeconomic status, or religion,” Ford said.

While each candidate sees self-segregation as an issue on campus that should be addressed, they each had different views on what this year’s diversity of candidates means for SA in the long run.

Rosales said having minorities in leadership positions is important, and having three minority candidates running for president shows progress.

Ford said he saw this year’s election as a sign of different types of people getting involved in a broader range of leadership positions, but said he isn’t sure if it’s a long-term trend.

“I think it’s just those are the people that ran this year,” Ford said. “I fully believe next year it will go back to what it has been. I guess time will tell for that because this year could very well just be an outlier.”

 

Published on October 28, 2013 at 12:05 am

Contact Brett: blsamuel@syr.edu | @Brett_Samuels27