Collegian

Malcolm Cash, an instructor on campus, believes that a movement toward greater diversity on campus has started, but more can be done.

It started as a result of the March 7 Bellevue Community College presentations at the student senate meeting, when a heated argument broke out over diversity.

The Student Senate was told that Cash and students from BCC would be presenting as part of what was called a diversity tour.

Cash went to Bellevue Community College in Seattle and spent an entire semester there to work with the faculty and students to promote diversity. LCCC agreed to this.

LCCC also paid for Cash to bring BCC students here to give the presentations.

He and students from BCC went to several places in Lorain County, including Admiral King high school and an Arts and Humanities division meeting.

"I wanted to expose students and faculty to another way of leadership," he says of the March 7 meeting. The students from BCC claimed that LCCC had "institutionalized racism and no diversity in clubs or leadership positions on campus."

Some LCCC students who attended the meeting were offended by the comments from Cash and the visiting students. Cash agreed that the original meetings did not go as planned.

"I thought the sessions did not go well...but it's not my whole responsibility to take care of prepping the students for presentations. I don't think that the faculty and student senate were prepped correctly, and the foundation was not set for these presentations," Cash said.

He said that in the packet that was passed out before the presentations began, the goal was to "celebrate diversity and student leadership."

There has been another meeting since the original to discuss what happened with the BCC presentations.

Cash says that his past has a big affect on the way he sees diversity issues now.

When Cash was in high school, he had a 0.50 GPA, and ended up dropping out before he got his diploma.

"I read everything in high school, but I hated class. I didn't think the teachers cared about me, so why should I care about them? I used to just sit in the back of the class and read all the time. When I was in high school, I felt like the public school system was racist...and I believe it still is."

Cash says that students in high school need to be reading and learning more about different cultures and people.

"I'm not saying you shouldn't be studying Hawthorne and Shakespeare, but we need to read Martin Luther King as well. I'm not interested in an anti-white anything, but I want a diverse curriculum."

He also says that the faculty on campus needs to be more diverse as well.

"LCCC has an important number of students on this campus, and they need to be represented in the classroom. Since I have been here, three or four people have been hired in the Arts and Humanities Department, and none of them have been colored."

Cash says that he would love to go to other campuses and recruit teachers of different races.

"If LCCC is very serious about making this faculty diverse, that's what they should do, and they have started to do that. I do see movement about the diversity issues on campus...and I'm happy about that."

Article Tools