Campus leaders hope for more minority involvement

It's after midnight on Saturday night and Dr. Gilbert Brown, associate dean of students, is overlooking a Student Recreational Sports Center basketball court-turned dance floor. Hundreds of students have gathered for a pajama party put on by Alpha Phi Alpha, a black fraternity, complete with shifting rainbow lights and a professional deejay.\nBrown said the event reminded him of how his own undergraduate days were -- and it reminds him of how he hopes IU will eventually become. Brown is encouraging the University to invest itself in opening various venues on campus to more minority involvement. He said he hopes venues such as the Indiana Memorial Union, the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and the SRSC can be more accessible to underrepresented groups.\n"The parties are the invisible tapestry that sort of bind the black undergraduates together," Brown said. "It was like that when I was an undergraduate. You really look forward to these parties on the weekend. ... You go there, you dance, you have conversations with friends. It's a magnet. It draws people together. If you take away that opportunity for students, you're really kind of denying how they express themselves culturally."\nBrown has already met with many of the black greek organizations on campus, as well as Residential Programs and Services to discuss the issue. He said he hopes dialogue will continue with the other venues and facilities involved so a solution can be met.\n"African-American students and black greeks should not be held to a higher standard than their white counterparts -- and nor should it be a lower standard," he said. "I'm just interested in making sure the playing field is level. We need to approach it from a campus-wide perspective, and not just small pockets."\nBrandon Williams, president of the National Panhellenic Council, is one of the people with whom Brown met to discuss opening up more campus facilities for such events. Williams said black fraternities have a negative reputation on campus, which sometimes undermines their attempts to have social functions.\n"We're trying to work on getting some new places where we can have parties and have social functions," he said. "It's so hard because in the past at certain functions there have been fights, there have been minor setbacks. So people are a little apprehensive about letting black greek organizations, or black organizations in general, get a room and be able to come together and have a function."\nRPS officials also met with Brown and pledged to help the minority groups on campus find space for functions, said Director of Residential Operations Bob Weith. However, Weith added that many of RPS's large group spaces have been turned into academic support centers or are too close to residential housing to routinely hold parties that go late and may be loud and disruptive. \nStill, Weith said he is committed to working with other campus groups to ensure the problem is addressed. \n"We're attempting to reach out to campus, to the IMU, to Recsports and the SRSC and other places where there are large areas and to maybe try to create some kind of pact between all of us to share this issue," he said. "My belief is that if we really do believe the things we say about wanting to promote diversity issues, this is a meaningful way to do that."\nBoth Brown and Williams agreed there are signs a change is beginning to take place. The pajama party at the SRSC ran smoothly, without any incidents of fights or violence. It was also the second such event to take place recently, after the NPC hosted an "icebreaker" get-together at the Willkie Auditorium a week earlier. \nBut Brown said he believes that despite the positive signs, more work needs to be done throughout the entire campus.\n-- Contact staff writer Gavin Lesnick at glesnick@indiana.edu.