About 20 students braved stormy weather Thursday evening to attend the latest diversity event on campus, “DiversiTEA: A Chai Chat” held by the Muslim-Cultural Student Association.
The students sipped chai tea and participated in a roundtable discussion held in Norris, billed as “Deconstructing Religious and Racial Identities in Modern Context,” which addressed similar topics as previous diversity events, such as Wednesday’s Speak Up and last Friday’s NU4DiversityNow on Deering Meadow.
Miriam Gomaa, administrative vice president of the Muslim-Cultural Student Association, welcomed the crowd and introduced the discussion's format.
“This is like a fishbowl,” Gomaa said. “You’ll be able to express your thoughts, anybody in the audience is invited to join at any time.”
The discussion was moderated by Nathaniel Matthews, a grad student in history and convert to Islam. Matthews introduced himself by discussing his background, including his childhood in Champaign, Ill., which he described as “not diverse” and having “a history of problems with police brutality and racism.”
Matthews then acknowledged that it was yet another “conversation stemming from the events of the past week.” He added that previous conversation “has tended to be surface level.”
“Hopefully the thing to come out of this dialog is a deeper probing,” Matthews said.
The discussion focused on the role of conformity in creating a diverse community at Northwestern, which students viewed as very segregated.
“If you’ve never been pushed to reach out to another cultural or someone from a different group, Northwestern makes it very easy to not do that,” said Weinberg sophomore Isabella Pasbakhsh.
However, students agreed that a “melting pot” approach was not the solution to campus diversity, and felt cultural grouping was not an issue.
“I understand I’m living in a comfort zone, but as long as I’m not hurting anyone I don’t see why that’s a problem,” said Weinberg junior Aatifa Shareef. “I think the problem lies when other groups are insulted by your actions.”
Editor's Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the "Speak Up" event as "Speak Now." NBN regrets the error.