TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Students from The University of Alabama and Stillman College will attend a Diversity Weekend Workshop on the Stillman campus Friday and Saturday, Jan. 26-27.
Led by UA and Stillman College faculty, students will examine race, economics, culture, community-building and news media coverage of these and other issues.
Retired UA professor Edward Mullins and the Knight Fellows in Community Journalism at the Anniston Star will be the keynote speakers for the event on Saturday. They will discuss ways in which newspapers and online journalism builds community.
Amanda Brozana, who teaches journalism at both UA and Stillman College, says the project is not only about groups learning to live together with their differences, but is also a practical exercise leading to the launch of “West Side Signal” and “westsidesignal.com.”
A prototype of the publication will emerge from the workshop, Brozana said, with continuous development during the semester. Mullins said he and Brozana have submitted two grant applications to help fund the launch and that he will announce soon that one of the applications has been approved, assuring publication of at least four issues of the newspaper this spring.
Partners in the project will be UA’s Center for Community-Based Partnerships and Dateline Alabama, a student-produced online publication. Ashley Boyd, a junior from Birmingham, is editor of the Web site.
The program begins at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. UA instructor Samantha Briggs will help students identify and challenge their assumptions about race, be more aware of place and time in their culture and search for new ways of thinking about race.
Beginning at 1:45 p.m. on Saturday, the public is invited to a town-hall session to discuss encounters with local media and to learn more about the West End community.
Other speakers include: Dr. Samory Pruitt, UA vice president for community affairs; Estelle Ryan Clavelli and Christopher H. Spencer of UA’s division of the Center for Community-Based Partnerships on building partnerships; and, Dr. Caryl Cooper, assistant dean, UA College of Communication and Information Sciences, on the history of media coverage of race-related issues.
In this unique program, students enrolled in journalism classes at the two institutions will face issues intellectually and personally in residence and dining halls.
“The workshop is not a one-shot cure-all,” Brozana said. “It has been designed to bring students together from various backgrounds throughout the semester to learn and to interact cordially and respectfully in classes and also to socialize outside of class.”
“Each class will play a crucial role in developing the product,” she said. “This workshop and the follow-ups will allow students to face racial views they may hold unconsciously. If we do our job as leaders and get the students to open up, we will be able to build a cohesive team that will build a successful product.”
The big difference in the UA-Stillman collaboration and similar ones is that “we are not attempting to get students of different backgrounds to get along just because they should. They will also have to get along – and we hope become good friends – in order to produce a product. That’s the way things work in the real world. So our project is not a hypothetical. It is truly a reality check.”
Mullins said that another goal of the project is “to get more minorities into the journalism profession and to educate white journalists in how racial dynamics affect their selection, reporting and presentation of the news.”
Although minorities make up 13 percent of the journalism workforce, they are 32 percent of the U.S. population, Mullins said, “and that first figure drops each year as the second one increases.”
Brozana believes the project can help those outside of journalism as well. “The issue of race and racial difference is like an elephant in the room. By allowing students at these two institutions and fields to come together and talk openly about race, we can help them get a clearer understanding of the world today.”
For more information call 205/348-8592 or contact Amanda Brozana at 570/479-2396, albrozana@bama.ua.edu.
Contact
Lauren Stricklin or Linda Hill, UA Public Relations, 205/348-8325, lhill@ur.ua.edu
Source
Amanda Brozana, 570/479-2396, albrozana@bama.ua.edu