A path toward harmony

By Sydney Schrank and Ashley Roo

Safe spaces have been set up at the University of Colorado Boulder in an effort to motivate and engage campus organizations and to provide students with self-empowerment and giving back to the community, a report said.

CU Engage, a center that coordinates and sustains community engagement efforts at CU, conducted a research project called “Students of Color Are Motivated Agents of Change.” The report said the goal of the research was to evaluate the university’s campus climate and inclusivity, and tried to identify what these students received from safe spaces.

In recent years, CU-Boulder has established the use of safe spaces, which are support groups for underrepresented students of color, campus spokesman Bronson Hilliard told the Boulder Daily Camera. Safe spaces provide a place where underrepresented students can find a voice and access resources.

“Safe spaces are key resources to students,” said CU undergraduate Yohannese Gebremedhin. “They provide a form of institutional recognition in a sense that can be both a place of support and also a way to network with like minded individuals. When a space invests in students and encourages them, students feel a sense of obligation to give back. The resources can be both academic and social, and those both play a part in helping students navigate the university.”

The research concluded that this newfound sense of self-empowerment allowed the students to understand their advantages and disadvantages in the community, the CU Engage report said. By recognizing their strengths and weakness, the individuals became stronger and determined from these experiences.

CU-Boulder has been characterized for having a lack of diversity in the past and has been consistently searching for ways to accommodate students of color since, another Daily Camera article said.

The article said that in May 2015, CU-Boulder placed $217,000 toward developing a plan with Chicago-based Emeritus Consulting Group for continuing to enhance and increase diversity on campus over the course of the next 30 months.

“We really want to come out of this process with a definition of diversity that’s modern, that’s contemporary and inclusive, and expansive,” Hilliard said.

The consulting group project working towards developing a plan for diversity will not be limited to just race, but other aspects of diversity such as gender, class and political affiliation.

David Aragon, the executive director for student success in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, said that diversity and campus climate are challenging processes that take time, but that he has seen changes on campus.

“The composition of our student body is more rapidly increasing in its diversity,” Aragon said. “In the last five years, we’ve gone from being 15 percent students of color to 20 percent students of color, and that (number has increased in) the freshman class each year.”

The report said that students and faculty can help the students of color in many different ways, such as financial resources and communication between groups.