Social justice banquet to honor community’s work

Three years ago Yves-Rose SaintDic, director of Institutional Equity and Diversity at GCSU, first planned the Flagg Social Justice Award Legacy Banquet to honor GCSU and Middle Georgia community members for their work in social justice.

Individuals are nominated year-round and are honored at a dinner held in Magnolia Ballroom.

“The idea of the dinner is to recognize all the people in our community and campus who are doing work,” SaintDic said. “Our students are involved in so many groups, but we don’t really know; we don’t really celebrate it.”

This year, 22 students, faculty and community members will be recognized Feb. 13 at 6 p.m. The Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, along with the Black Student Alliance and President’s Commission on Diversity, will sponsor the banquet in the Magnolia Ballroom.

The awards and nominations are to help congratulate students and individuals that go above and beyond with their time on campus.

“Four-year education, you can probably get that online, but you come to the college campus because you really want to have an impact somewhere, you want to leave your legacy,” SaintDic said.

Two of the 22 nominees will receive an award during the night’s event. One award will be given to a GCSU faculty, staff or student and the other to a Middle Georgia community member. Individuals can be nominated for a range of different issues, not just focusing on diversity.

“Generally, the Georgia College person has to be somebody who has founded or has a leadership role in a organization that has worked with social justice,” SaintDic said. “The community one will have somebody who’s worked on social justice for a while.”

The keynote speaker for the banquet is Della Smith, a Hancock County native who has retired from Intel Corp. Smith worked, both locally and nationally, to promote the growth of youths’ skills. Smith earned Intel’s Achievement Awards for Excellence during her time with the company.

“She’s come to the banquet every year so last year I was talking to her afterward and she was telling me about the work she’s done and I was like ‘she’d be a great speaker,’ ” SaintDic said.

The banquet also serves a dual purpose to bring people together to talk about issues in the community.

“We pre-assign seats, . and at the table we put a combination of whatever, staff, student, community people, a nominee at each table so people can have a conversation about the work they do,” SaintDic said. “If we do help them create friendships and we put them in situations, . then they build those connections and then it’s more integrated value-wise.”

Posted by Matt Chambers on Feb 12 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry