Students march for diversity

In the pouring rain, students marched from the Athletic Association Complex to the Student Center Theater. The march, called the 1246 March, was to bring attention to the number of African-American students on campus.

"We had about 150 come to the event. Unfortunately it rained, but we still had people walk across the campus in the rain," said Christopher Carter, an Industrial Engineering student who helped plan the event.

There were three speakers at the event: Gordon Moore, the director of the Office of Minority Education; Andrea Ashmore, special assistant to Institute President Wayne Clough; and Boyce Watkins, a professor at Syracuse University.

"The speakers were fervent about what they were discussing, the keynote speaker especially," Carter said. Watkins, the keynote speaker, has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, 'Quite Frankly with Steven A. Smith' and other shows on television. He has published two books including Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about College - A Guide for Minority Students.

Moore was the first to speak at the event.

"Moore said that black students do not do the best job of working together to help each other out. The graduation rate is low among black students and they have to be excellent and help each other out because there are a lot of distractions in college," Carter said.

Ashmore talked about community involvement and how the community on campus can get involved in the larger community as a whole.

"She said that there are many things going on outside campus and the student community has not been involved in the outside community. Students think it is a huge accomplishment to be at Tech. But it is not enough just to be here, students have to go a help someone else; pull someone else up," Carter said.

Watkins told students to emerge into leaders.

"Growing up, people told him that he couldn't go to college, that he wasn't smart enough. He said the same thing is being told to young urban kids today. That if you aren't an athlete or a rapper, you won't make it in the world. It took a special person in his life to tell him that everything he was told wasn't true and that he could make it," Carter said.

According to Carter, Watkins talked about visiting a person in jail for murder and talking with him about using the courage that the person displayed by murdering the person towards a positive goal.

"He said that students need to put their energy and time into doing something positive. Also, higher education is a new thing to some people and not appreciated enough," Carter said. The purpose of the event was to show campus how many students exist on campus from culturally diverse backgrounds.

"If you were to ask a black person, how many black students are on campus, they might say two to three hundred. But the real number is 1246 and it leads to the question, where are all these students? We have a lot of cultural diversity, but not everyone is involved. If all the people were involved, then we would really impact campus and Atlanta as a whole," Carter said.

The event is planned as an annual event, but the event will not be the same every year. "We want to expand. This type of event needs to be spread across campus to the whole student body," Carter said.