By ANDREA LOPEZ
Multimedia Editor

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — The UCM Office of Institutional Research reported that 1,080 students identified themselves as black or African-American for the fall 2015 semester. Nearly 50 of those students gathered in the Ward Edwards Building on Jan. 27 to discuss how UCM can become more black friendly.

PHOTO BY KAITLIN BROTHERS / PHOTOGRAPHER
Black students participate in a town hall meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 27, in Ward Edwards Building to discuss how the university can better recognize predominantly black student organizations on campus.

“We actually spoke about (not only) what was going on in the African-American community as a whole on campus, but as a whole in the Warrensburg community,” said Martez Barnum, junior hotel and restaurant administrator major.

As a whole, Barnum said the pressure is on the black community here.

“The black community as a whole needs to step it up more and not just wait for things to get spoon fed to them or handed to them,” he said. “We actually need to do things that we say need to go on. We need to show it.”

For Lauren Newsome, sophomore middle school education major, her big takeaway from the meeting was that there’s a division with black organizations on campus.

“What we came up with, as individuals, the administration and teachers really support us,” she said. “Professors always respond to emails, we get a lot of support and love, but as predominantly African-American organizations, we do not get the support or recognition that we feel we deserve or have earned.”

Newsome said what’s missing is the collaboration efforts and getting the black organizations more attention.

“In reality, what should be happening is the school saying, ‘Hey, you guys are a part of our school, we want to include you on these events,’ and the African-American organizations coming back and saying, ‘Oh, what do you need us to do, what can we do, how can we combine, how can we collaborate?’” she said. “I think this session really helped open up our eyes to our own faults as well as the faults within the school.”

As the president of a newer mentoring organization called Underdogs, Newsome said she decided to go to the town hall meeting for resourceful reasons.

“I really wanted to gain information and bring it back to the freshmen and also voice the opinions of our freshmen and myself,” she said. “I’m also active in African-American organizations, as well as major organizations, like Spotlight and MO Volunteers, so because I kind of straddle the fence, I wanted to have the perspective of both and basically voice my opinion, since a lot of people don’t have both sides of the spectrum.”

Although the town hall meetings are geared toward specific underrepresented groups on campus, Newsome invites non-minority students to participate in the discussion.

“I encourage Caucasian students, Indian students, whoever, anyone who’s not of color, African-American standing, should come to these meetings to hear other people’s point of view,” Newsome said. “I know several people that are in African- American organizations went to the Latino town hall meeting, to get their perspective. It shouldn’t just be African-Americans talking about African-American problems. It should be African-Americans and everyone talking about all the problems, because, at the end of the day, they’re not African-American problems, they’re UCM problems.”

While she’s grateful for the experience, Newsome said she wonders what the outcome will be.

“I really appreciate the school offering this,” she said. “The only thing I’m concerned about it, is that although that we’ve expressed our concerns, our opinions, even our solutions, I don’t know where it goes from here. The pen went on the paper, and they wrote down everything, but, what do we do after that?”

The four-week long town hall series will continue throughout the week. The UCM Office of Mentoring, Advocacy and Peer Support hosted the LGBTQUIA town hall meeting Wednesday evening, and the undergraduate international student town hall meeting is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Feb. 10 in Union 237.