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"diversity"

"Invisible" Indians Converge on Campus

By Andrew Choi '13 on April 17, 2012 10:05 AM

The thunder of drums and the syncopated chant of voices echoed through Eliot Chapel last month when traditional dancers swept a captivated audience of students and faculty into a culture, a community--even a world--often overlooked by those outside of it: the Native American community.

The dance introduced Reed's fifth annual Vine Deloria lecture, a panel discussion titled "Making the Visible Invisible," referring to the striking fact that Portland has the ninth largest Native American population in the United States, including more than 20,000 residents drawn from 380 different tribes, according to a recent report titled "The Native American Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profile," released by the Coalition of Communities of Color and PSU.The panel discussion served as a powerful counterpoint to the energy and brightness of the dance, and presented a sobering portrait of prejudice, racism, and repeated attempts by mainstream culture to define Indians out of existence.

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Reed Conquers the Globe

By Nisma Elias '12 on April 06, 2012 02:17 PM

"Reed jus ah stress mi out…and that means reed is stressing me out," said Shanee Harriot '15 setting off the audience into splits of laughter. Shanee's Jamaican-English creole routine was only one of the performances that delighted the audience at the International Festival, held on April 1. There were no stand up acts but Shanee made sure that everyone at the SU that afternon had a good laugh, "jah know ah weh mi ah go do fi get dis ya work done, mi salt to bauxide!" (Oh my God what am I going to do to get this work done? I'm screwed!)

International Festival, organized by the International Student Advisory Board (ISAB) is an annual celebration of Reed's cultural diversity. The center of the festival was the student union, which had vibrant flags of all the countries represented at Reed draped across its rafters. "I didn't know Reed had students from so many countries," remarked one observer who dropped into the SU because he heard music and laughter streaming out. That was exactly one of the reasons why ISAB was eager to promote the presence of the 116 international students from 35 nations at Reed by having everyone share a piece of their culture.

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Fiercely Feministing

By Nisma Elias '12 on March 27, 2012 03:04 PM

Who needs credit cards when you have a junior vagina? read one of the slides in Samhita Mukhopadhyay's talk, arranged by the Multicultural Resource Center on March 21. Mukhopadhyay, who is the executive editor of feministing.com, emphasized in her stirring talk why feminism is still needed in today's world.

She highlighted the case of the panties sold in Walmart's junior section with the phrase "Who needs credit cards . . ." printed on the crotch and "when you have Santa" on the derriere. After spotting the undergarments in the juniors department of a Walmart in Cary, North Carolina, a horrified reader alerted the blog, which broke the story, triggering an uproar from parents that ultimately forced Walmart to pull the offensive underpants from shopping aisles.

"The message broadcast to adolescent girls was that they don't need to worry about finances since they have their very own moneypot between their legs," said Mukhopadhyay.

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Year of the Dragon

By Nisma Elias '12 on January 31, 2012 02:29 PM

Reed ushered in the Year of the Dragon last week with dancing lions, dueling Tai Chi masters and delicious dim sum.

Soothing strains of the two-stringed erhu (that's the Chinese violin) drifted out from Kaul auditorium on Sunday, January 22nd, at a celebration organized by the Chinese House. The room was bathed with crimson light from the oval paper lanterns that hung from the ceiling. Couplets and calligraphy festooned the walls, conveying blessings and prosperity to the occasion.

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Steele the Show

By Stacey Kim on November 01, 2011 08:44 AM

A Reed education is founded on reading: great books, research papers, poetry, prose, nonfiction, and everything in between. It's natural, then, that the first major initiative to come out of the new institutional diversity office is a Community Reading Project.

Dean Crystal Williams has invited Reed students, faculty, and staff to read social psychologist Claude Steele's seminal work Whistling Vivaldi in advance of the lecture Steele will deliver Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 4:30 p.m. in the chapel. Steele's lecture is free and open to the public.

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