Speaker inspires action, change

Leaders of tomorrow from across the country met over the weekend to discuss the issues of today.

More than 500 people were registered for the Men and Women of Color Leadership Conference, and participants came from schools as far away as Clark Atlanta University and Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas.

Selected middle school and high school students from the Monroe County area also attended certain events and sessions.

Participants attended workshops about self-improvement, networking and controversial topics such as “Issues in the Age of Obama.”

Speakers, including Robert Jackson, author of “No More Excuses: Black Men Stand Up!” and BET correspondent Jeff Johnson discussed their own struggles in becoming efficient leaders and gave advice to students about how to truly make a difference in their campus community.

Johnson attended the University of Toledo, a predominantly white school. He gave up his track scholarship to become the Black Student Union president at his university.

From there he said he became the first and only African American to become president of student government at his institution. He spoke to students about his personal experience.

“So, I’m not coming to you as some dude that tries to do news on BET,” Johnson said. “I’m coming to you as somebody that sat in the very same seats that you’ve sat in; that’s been in the office by myself wondering, do I know what in the hell I’m doing; that’s wondering why I am going to events that nobody is showing up to; that’s wondering why am I wasting my time sacrificing my grades and my sanity in the name of a population that doesn’t understand what leadership is about.”

Johnson said he hoped that the students take the knowledge they gained from this conference and actually use it.

“I am going to be real, real honest with you,” Johnson said. “I am only talking to about 10 percent of y’all because the other 90 percent of you will do nothing. And if you don’t like it, then prove me wrong.”

Johnson said that he has been to many conferences “where people leave inspired to a state of euphoric inactivity,” but he hoped that the attendees from this conference would strive for more.

And the student leaders of today wasted no time in taking action.

At the end of Johnson’s speech, students asked questions about how to make positive changes in their college community.

Senior Shanel Poole of Indiana State University asked Johnson how to communicate with an administration of a predominantly white university to meet the needs of its minority students.

Poole said her concern is that although Indiana State University has a large amount of African-American students compared with any other public university in Indiana, the institution has fewer than 10 African-American professors with a doctorate. This imbalance worries Poole.

“In a class of 60 diverse students with only predominantly white professors, it takes away from that connection, and it makes students feel unwanted,” Poole said. “We are all feeling left out because we don’t have any type of professors or administrators to relate to or anyone that looks identical to us. And it becomes a serious problem.”

From the advice Johnson gave her, Poole hopes that she can steer the administration into looking more closely at the issue of the lack of diversity of faculty on campus.

“What I felt is, he made me aware that we as students have a responsibility to not only voice our concerns, but set out the plan for the administration to know exactly what steps to take to help fulfill what the concerns and issues are,” Poole said.