About 50 students gathered on the ground floor of Annenberg Hall early Monday evening for Wake Up!, an event meant to encourage conversation about race on campus.
The event was organized by a group of “student leaders that have these discussions all the time,” according to Lucia León, Communication junior and one of the event’s organizers. Wake Up! was intended to continue the dialogue on diversity after previous events earlier this year.
“We wanted to keep the momentum from last quarter,” León said. “We’re just trying to spark up the dialogue.”
The event started with a screening of an audio slideshow titled “Nommo” about six Northwestern students and their experiences with race on campus. According to the presentation, nommo is a Swahili word that means “the power of the word.”
Throughout the presentation, the six students talked about diversity on campus. Some of the featured students said they chose to study at Northwestern because of the school’s diversity and to get away from the nondiverse environments of their high schools. Still, many went on to recount instances when they felt discriminated against on campus. The presentation continued with such themes as minority studies programs on campus, multicultural groups and the wide socioeconomic diversity at Northwestern.
After the presentation, attendees were split up into four smaller discussion groups and sent to different Annenberg classrooms to share reactions to the audio.
“It got reactions from people,” León said, “and that was the goal, to get people to react.”
According to the presenters, Wake Up! was meant to be unique among the other discussions of race on campus this past year by being advertised as a place where students could voice their candid opinions without fear of reprimand or offending another student.
According to León, the event will continue Friday with a letter writing campaign at the Black House.