Although UW-Platteville has come a long way in dealing with diversity, it still has a long way to go.

“I wouldn’t say it’s not an accepting campus. It’s not a 100 percent welcoming campus,” Carlos Wiley, director of the Multicultural Educational Resource Center, said.

“When I first came here, I didn’t find it to be welcoming at all,” Zakiya Catlin, junior occupational safety major and president of the Black Student Union, said. “I was the only black student in all of my classes. I felt below everybody else.”

Visiting MERC helped her feel more comfortable at UW-P.

“It made me realize, my God, I’m not the only one,” Catlin said. “It’s gotten better just by the people I have interacted with.”

“Our world is changing,” Mick Viney, assistant chancellor for student affairs, said. “We need to be ready to become more culturally competent and address the institutionalized racism, sexism and homophobia that exists in society and sometimes in ourselves.”

Part of UW-P’s mission is to make the campus a welcoming and comfortable place for students, especially because of the university’s active recruitment of minority students, Wiley said.

“When we’re out recruiting students, we have to have stuff here for them,” Wiley said.

If people have questions relating to diversity, they need to ask them. For instance, Devine Nzegwu, junior international studies major and diversity director for Student Senate, prefers to be referred to as African-American because she is from Nigeria.

“Don’t hold back, because you will never know,” Nzegwu said. “We learn from others’ ignorance. How will you learn if you never ask?”

Minority students on campus include women, students of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning students, and students with disabilities, Wiley said. For students with disabilities, etiquette can be important.

“When we talk about students with disabilities, it’s always person first,” LeAnn Leahy, disability services specialist, said. For instance, instead of saying a wheelchair-bound student, people
should say a student in a wheelchair.

“We see those people and we tend to believe they are completely helpless, which is a stereotype,” Wiley said. “So we’ll help them out, but we won’t sit down and have a conversation with them.”

Communication with minority groups can be a problem because of fears of being politically incorrect, Wiley said.

“If I have a question, I ask,” Wiley said. Having homosexual friends, he took the opportunity to ask some sometimes stupid questions. “I’m not gay, so I don’t know.”