Diversity/ ISCORE

This week was diversity week, which we all know is a touchy subject that we sometime joke around with. This can be bad because if we around someone of the diversity that we are joking about, we can hurt some people’s feelings. I personally don’t usually get offended by these types of jokes because I feel that I am a joking, laid back guy. Although, I learned from Tuesday’s class that just because I am not offended doesn’t mean no one else is (I apologize if I offended anyone in class with my actions during the activity). As a peer mentor I should work on this for next year, watching my joking behavior and being careful not to say anything that will offend anybody, especially during any diversity topic. This isn’t possible to never ever say anything that will offend someone but keeping an eye on myself will minimize offending some individuals.

Even though it stirred up some feeling Tuesday, I enjoyed Cory and Jenna’s activity they got from David Coleman. It showed me that diversity isn’t just race and sex, that these are just two of the major ones. The activity even opened my eyes to how I can treat some people different just because of a stereotype that I have in my head. Being aware of this will help me greatly in the future to treat everyone as equal. Like the golden rule that Cory mentioned, “Treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”

On Friday, I attended the ISCORE event, "Minority Student Athlete Experiences at a Predominately White Institution" along with Beth and Karan. They had a couple football and basketball players and a gymnast come talk about their struggles as a minority in a predominately white college. Most of them talked about coming from high schools with about 1000 students and having a lot of their minority at their school. Once at Iowa State there wasn’t as much as their race here, but one way they all handle the change was hanging out with there teammate. While one individual I remember came from a small town in Texas where his race was the majority. He said that everyone knew each other and were friendly in his hometown. As for Iowa State, he talked about people being stuck up while walking on campus because he would say hello to someone and they just stare at him like why are you talking to me. That hit home with me personally, we shouldn’t out someone because of race, sex, or etc. We are all humans and it doesn’t matter if we are white, black, yellow, green, or anything a lot those lines. We are all equals!