Colors United increases cultural awareness
Colors United is an organization dedicated to bringing about cultural awareness, tolerance, cooperativeness, cohesion and perhaps acceptance of all cultures on our campus. Colors United is a local organization that was founded a number of years ago by Mr. Ken Jasnoe, a community activist for Baldwin County, and a few other individuals whose sole purpose was to “engage in activities directed at the elimination of racism and prejudice in our community.”
Their mission statement reads: “We believe that achieving peace in our world must begin with grassroots efforts aimed at creating unity among people of all races, ethnic backgrounds and religions. If war is to ever cease on our planet we must all come to realize that we are all children of the same Father. Prejudice is based on lack of knowledge and thus fear of those who are different from ourselves. If we could educate everyone to come together in unity and appreciate our differences by working together, many of our problems could be solved.”
Colors United has one single focus and that is to encourage and support diversity on campus in a proactive manner.
“What we are doing may not seem like much, but for those of us who have been around the campus long term and have been a part of discussions about diversity year in and year out, Colors United offers an opportunity to not just continue talking about the issue of diversity, but to actually do something about it,” said Dr. Robin Harris, director of the Office of Experiential Learning.
This group provides the campus with an audience willing to hear and respond to the concerns facing our diverse student body. After considering a number of options Colors United seeks ways to bring about awareness.
A wide range of activities have been discussed this year, many of which are simple things such as making an effort to attend events that appear specific to one culture and inviting others to attend them also thus offering support and encouragement for everyone to expand their horizons and participate in activities outside of their normal experience.
“It is important that people realize that one can only gain from a situation what he or she has invested. Many of the Georgia College & State University student body as well as faculty and staff members have grown wire of mediocrity of the diversity issues on campus,” said Student Ambassador Herby Agnew. “The formation of the GC&SU chapter of Colors United is certainly a response from passionate individuals who seek to gain big dividends from having an enriched cultural experience. I would like to encourage everyone to come and join us for one of our conversations. We welcome open-minded individuals, but we wish to broaden the horizons of those who have yet to get the message diversity is in, and not just for a season, but it’s here to stay.”
In the past, Colors United has met every other Wednesday in Chappell Hall at 7:30 p.m.; however, concerns were raised with reference to the late time. With this in consideration Colors United has decided to have their first meeting Feb. 19 in Lanier Hall in room 211 at 5 p.m.
Anyone interested should attend this meeting in order to learn more about Colors United.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 14 2003. Filed under Other.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
