Thought my time here I have been able to see the good and the bad parts of Duquesne.

I have
really enjoyed making new friends and learning more about nursing. When I think about what
needs to be improved there is always one thing that comes to mind. I think that a lot of the
student body is ignorant when it comes to the topic about race/ how to treat minorities.
Unfortunately, I have seen it all over campus from extra curricular activities to teachers treating
minority students differently. It is also sad that I don’t believe that the school does much to
combat this issue, in fact I think that they add to this problem in many ways. For example I was
at a lets talk about race event and a reporter showed up unannounced when I am in the middle of
sharing my story about the biases I have experienced on campus. In that situation I truly felt
exploited because it felt my privacy wasn’t respected by the school. There is also the problem of
minority groups on campus not trusting student government. I don’t have the full solution
because it takes time to build back broken trust. One thing that I think would help is if there was
a conversation where minorities would be able to share with other students what they go through
and how they feel about how they are treated. I am currently in the process of working on this
project! I have been staring to work with the center and getting opinions from the presidents of
these clubs and their boards to help to develop questions. The goal of this would be to hopefully
reduce bias in the student body. On the other hand, minority groups must acknowledge that this
student government is not the same as the ones who have hurt them in the past. I understand their
apprehensions to have this conversation because I myself did not know if I wanted to rejoin
student government this year. This is because of an incident that I had last year which was
racially motivated. That was a really tough experience because it’s hard to walk into a room and
see no one who looks like you. It is harder to feel that out of everyone in student government
there is only one person in your corner. The main reason that I chose to stay is because I believe
that I could truly help to make a difference for people of color on this campus. Since I decided to
start this project I have been able to get support from many people of color and figure out what
their goals with this conversation and what my own goals are. I think that this conversation about
race will be beneficial for SGA to build trust and connect with others on campus. I also have the
goal that if this conversation goes well than this could move forward past SGA into bigger
groups like Greek Life. If I were in a position of power than I would do a similar thing that I am
planning on doing now. Starting with meeting with the ODI and going from there.