About 70 students gathered Wednesday in Baker Ballroom as part of a Campus Conversation aimed at discussing racial issues.
John Brown VI said he always felt different.
He and several other panelists confessed similar feelings while discussing race issues at the third Campus Conversation held by Ohio University officials.
“Growing up in the South... I realized I was different,” Brown, a senior studying painting and drawing, said Wednesday at the event.
The most recent conversation drew a crowd of about 70 people in Baker Ballroom, where individuals from the Athens and OU communities discussed racial dynamics and inequality.
Recent race-related events in the media, such as the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have led OU students to be vocal about race issues on campus through multiple rallies, among other strategies.
Campus Conversations, the first of which was held in Fall 2014, aim to cover different topics relevant to the OU community, said Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones.
The conversations are a collaboration between university leaders, including officials from Student Affairs, Diversity and Inclusion, members of the Athens community and others.
A panel of six people kicked off the conversation with stories of their personal experiences regarding race.
Shari Clarke, vice provost for Diversity and Inclusion, said her upbringing in Toledo was diverse and surrounded by African-Americans that were “positive about blackness.”
When Clarke reached junior high and high school, she said she was in a mostly white environment. Her black friends encouraged her to stay true to her roots and not conform to those around her.
Delfin Bautista, director of OU’s LGBT Center and a native of Miami, recalled feeling out of place as a Latino while attending graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania.
“You are put in the box of Hispanics, and you need to speak for all Latinos,” Bautista said.
Hashim Pashtun, a member of Graduate Student Senate and president of the International Student Union, started off by challenging the audience’s perception of his own race.
Originally from Afghanistan, Pashtun began by falsely saying he was from northern Ohio.
He then revealed the truth in order to point out the difference in perception that people may have based on where an individual is from.
“Don’t prejudge people,” Pashtun said, as he recalled situations in which individuals have asked whether he had met Osama bin Laden, among other stereotypical remarks.
Checking the “other” box when prompted for his race on questionnaires is another factor that he said makes him feel isolated.
“That makes me feel bad,” Pashtun said. “Treat a person the way that you want to be treated … judge me on what I present.”
Another panelist, Chief Marketing Officer Renea Morris, said she “found out what being black in Chicago actually meant” during her childhood when she moved from a predominantly black neighborhood to a predominantly white one.
She also recalled racial tensions that led a fellow classmate’s mother to forbid her daughter from playing in front of Morris’ house.
“Being an African-American girl, things would be different,” she said of her experience.
Following the panel, participants took part in a question-and-answer session with the panelists before sharing their own race-related stories in groups.
Hall-Jones said the event was overall successful and well-attended.
Officials have not announced the topic of the next conversation, which will take place in April.
@megankhenry
