Expanded Programs/Activities Comprising the Multicultural Initiative

Multicultural activities will be designed to encourage students from diverse backgrounds to participate in the same activities, clubs, organizations and volunteer work. In addition, some activities will be organized especially for International students to better meet their interests and needs. Some of those activities will be primarily targeted towards bringing multicultural awareness to the campus and all students to reinforce globalization.

 

Scheduled activities include:

1.              Homecoming 2005 activities will feature a special reach out effort to bring back to campus other race alumni to share experiences and successes since graduation.

2.              A Multicultural Festival of Thanks, to take place during the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season, will feature discussion of different cultures and how their religions address different holidays.

3.      A Multicultural Other Race Recruiting Colloquium, during the month of February 2006, to discuss educational benefits of having a diverse student body and faculty.  While many institutions, particularly historically Black institutions focus on February as Black History Month and with excellent reason, Alcorn State University will seize the opportunity during this time to spotlight its increasingly diverse composition and the benefit that such diversity represents for its entire community, including its Black students, staff and faculty.

4.             A Multicultural Music and Food Festival, during the month of April 2006, to recognize and understand other race music and food representative of the diverse mix of students, staff and faculty on campus.  The festival will also be open to the greater community to expose our neighbors to the diverse mix present on campus.

 Other Activities to be Planned/Implemented:

•                   Establishment of a multidisciplinary team to identify and require all incoming freshmen to read a book that promotes racial/ethnic diversity, religious pluralism, tolerance and understanding.  During the freshman year course AIntroduction to University Life,@ engage all freshmen in facilitated dialogues about the book;
   

•          Drawing on Paul Robeson=s observation that music fosters common understandings, tears down bigotry, and promotes tolerance, development and testing of a music program to promote common bonds and engage students, faculty, and the broader community in dialogues about cultures, experiences, and common destinies.  Robeson observed, AWhen I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of song.@  A similar experience exists with Alcorn=s renowned choirs and partnership with the Natchez Opera Festival.  The institution will build on this experience and institutionalize and strategically foster engagement, understanding and a spirit of agape love and understanding through music;
   

•                   Design and require student and faculty attendance at ecumenical services featuring leading national and international lecturers on tolerance;
   

•                   Drawing on the traditional role that food has had in bringing people together, expand and institutionalize Alcorn’s international food festival by developing a New World Food menu featuring faith holiday meals.  The university will host dinner dialogues on faith days of particular significance to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Brahmans, Buddhists, and the primary ethnicities of our students and faculty members: African Americans, Mexicans, Russians, Canadians, Nigerians, Ghanaians, East Indians, and Iraqis.  Nationally or internationally renowned persons, faculty members, and/or students, will facilitate the dialogues; 
   

•                   Engage the professionals and students in the theater arts department in writing and producing a play about tolerance that would be performed at the new Natchez Arts Festival, and might be taken on the road;
   

•                   Engage the Political Science and or Philosophy department(s) in designing and directing a debate competition around a difficult discussion about race, ethnicity, religion, homophobia, xenophobia or other bigotry; and
   

•          Identify and engage a National Consortium of Scholars to come to Alcorn State University (and perhaps other universities in this traditionally isolated and insular region) to serve as the discussion leaders and lecturers at some of the above events.