Flags reflect colors of the college
Members of the Arts and Sciences Council's diversity committee, with the help of friends and family, work on a display of college demographics
On the grass in the University of Colorado’s Norlin Quadrangle, 3,688 flags are planted, and most of them are white. The display reflects the color of campus.
Each flag represents five people in the College of Arts and Sciences, including undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff. Overall, 3,118—or 85 percent—of the flags are white.
By contrast, only 72 percent of the state of Colorado’s population is white.
The display is the work of the Arts & Sciences Council’s Committee on Academic Community and Diversity. “The display's intent is to inspire, educate and bring awareness to the diversity in our arts and sciences community,” the group said in a statement.
“We would like to get faculty and students involved and get them thinking about diversity issues on this campus.”
The genesis of the flag display, which members of the committee decided to pursue last year, sprang from a desire to do something “visual and spectacular” to highlight the issue of ethnic diversity, the group said.
The group relied on racial/ethnic group data from the 2007-08 school year. White flags represent Caucasian students, faculty and staff, and a rainbow of color flags, chosen randomly, symbolize the under-represented groups: pink flags for Hispanic Americans, yellow for African Americans, green for Native Americans and blue for Asian Americans.
The flags are clustered in groups representing undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and staff.
Overall, Hispanic Americans compose 7 percent of the college’s population, compared with 19.5 percent of the state’s. African Americans make up 2 percent of the college’s ranks, compared to 4 percent of the state’s. Asian Americans compose 6 percent of the college population and 3 percent of Colorado’s. And Native Americans compose about 1 percent of both populations.
Committee members, family and friends erected the display on Sunday, Oct. 4. It will remain up for a week.
The diversity committee’s members are: Damian Doyle of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, Theresa Hernandez of psychology, Daniel Jones of honors, Daryl Maeda of ethnic studies, Lorecia Kaifa Roland of anthropology, Cecilia Pang of theatre & dance, Tin Tin Su of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and Emily Yeh of geography.
Oct. 6, 2009