Campus leaders are looking forward to restarting last semester's dialogue on race relations.
The "Capen House Talks," named after the African culture center, began last spring to address why white students were uncomfortable coming to the center.
The talks were organized by the University's Pan-African Alliance (PAA), and most of the attendees were PAA members, Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senators or members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community.
Discussion will continue from where it left off last year. Once the participants sat down for the original discussions, many other concerns poured out.
"Everybody just started talking about the general issues of race on campus," then-TCU culture representative junior Rob Kim said. "What are the issues we're facing, why aren't we talking, and what can we as students do to solve these problems?"
Kim is now the chair of the TCU Senate's committee on culture, ethnicity, and community affairs.
According to last year's TCU President, senior Dave Baumwoll, there were "a variety of smaller frustrations" that led to the discussions on race relations.
An event held before the dialogue began last spring, the Emerging Black Leaders Symposium, "had a very few number of non-black attendees," Baumwoll said. University President Lawrence Bacow did not attend the event.
There were also concerns about the non-responsiveness of the administration and the Tufts University Police Department to race-related incidents on campus.
"There was actually supposed to be a letter to Bacow to summarize what went on in last year's discussions," Kim said.
The letter was not written, but PAA members expect to send Bacow a letter this semester.
Baumwoll said it was important "to have it on paper that people in 2005 are still frustrated with the way issues of race and diversity are addressed."
After a meeting with Bacow, Baumwoll said the president was "very receptive to a lot of the things that were going on."
Another issue addressed in last year's talks was the lack of power of the Bias Intervention Team.
"We were talking about reforming the Bias Intervention Team so that we would find out about bias incidents before the end of the semester," junior Zoe Gibson said. Gibson is the PAA culture representative on the TCU Senate.
Kim said he wants to expand the discussion's participation. "It's important that the entire student body talk about [these issues]," he said. "These discussions need to happen in new forums and new locations with new people."
This year's talks will probably not begin until later in the semester to give organizers more time to recruit new members, Gibson said. "We want freshmen to be a part of it," she said.
Last semester, Gibson said, the PAA "wanted it to be open to the whole campus so that we had a whole range of views."
Baumwoll said last year's discussions accomplished their goals, in part. "They did a great job of getting people together," he said. "There were a lot of people's feelings coming out, a lot of people's frustrations coming out."
Baumwoll, Kim and Gibson said last year's discussions left many issues of race relations unresolved.
