Despite intermittent success with diversity programming, a recent Campus Conversation event about the ΣAE controversy had to be rescheduled due to a lack of attendees
The recent controversy surrounding the University of Oklahoma chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon has spurred a national debate about the racial make-up of Fraternities and Sororities around the country, and about diversity at universities in general.
Otterbein’s 80 percent white, 20 percent non-white ratio differs significantly from the national demographic average for non-profit, private institutions which is 68 percent white and 32 percent non-white. These numbers come from the National Center for Education Statistics.
According to Ben Schwarz, Assistant Director for the Center for Student Involvement, no specific numbers are kept on the racial make-up of Greek Life at Otterbein.
Despite the national attention this issue has garnered since the Sigma Alpha Epsilon story broke and despite Otterbein's lower than average minority demographic, few students attended the recent Campus Conversation last Thursday at 7pm which was hosted by the Otterbein Office of Diversity and sponsored by the Interfraternal Council, the Panhellenic Council, and the African American Student Union.
Campus Conversations is a program started by the Office of Diversity during the fall of 2013 as a way to trigger meaningful change in students’ interactions with each other about issues of diversity in their daily lives.
Dr. Lisa Patterson-Phillips, Director of the Office of Diversity said “We usually get about fifteen to twenty people at most of our events. What we’ve learned to recognize is that the people who come to our events walk away with something.”
“Truthfully, you learn more about diversity in two a.m. residence hall conversations… than you might learn in a structured fifty minute program. We want to create the environment so those two a.m. conversations can happen," said Patterson-Phillips.
Unfortunately, after some intermittent success with Campus Conversations, attendance in general began to drop.
“The one we had on race equality had fifty people at it,” said Dr. Patterson-Phillips about a Campus Conversation held earlier this year.
Yet the one held Thursday evening was the second on the topic, rescheduled after negligible attendance the previous week. In fact it was after this first meeting that Dr. Patterson-Phillips and her colleagues began reaching out more heavily to students with posters, emails, and through student organization sponsorship.
“There’s also a university committee, the Commission on Diversity and Inclusion” she mentioned as an additional method of addressing issues of diversity on campus alongside a new student senator position devoted to representing diversity based organizations.
When asked if she had any final comments about the way issues of diversity were being addressed at Otterbein given it’s above the average lack of diversity, Patterson-Phillips said, “What we were really trying to do is get the conversation about our campus and our community started by giving people a common experience to start that conversation with.”
Typically the Office of Diversity holds four to five campus conversations a semester.
The Director for the Center for Institutional Research here at Otterbein, Sean McLaughlin, was contacted but unavailable for comment on the national demographics.
