PLYMOUTH-April 11th Plymouth State University’s Fire Place Lounge was filled with students and faculty alike to participate in the Pride Flag Forum sponsored by the Student Senate.
Evelyn Stiller, a professor for the Computer Science and Technology Department acted as the facilitator for the discussion. To start off the night, Stiller introduced Whitney Howarth, a member of the Presidential Commission for Diversity (PCD).
Howarth described the PCD as an advisory council to PSU’s President Donald Wharton, giving aid to decisions on campus
The International Diversity wall was originally put into place ten years ago after Vice President of Student Affairs, Dick Hage requested that Flags be put up to represent the native countries of PSU’s international students.
“The International Diversity wall evolved without any clear cut criteria” Howarth stated. Howarth went on to say that “the PCD wants to clear up criteria as to what this wall means and what should be allowed on the wall.”
One of the first student speakers of the night, Jon Soler a Marketing major at PSU thought that “if the wall is to be renamed, more flags need to go up to represent everything about the students who go to PSU.” Soler also said” if the wall is focused on differences in culture, it needs to be renamed”.
On October 4th of 2005, an Installation Ceremony for the Pride Flag was conducted. The Pride Flag was given a home on a wall with the International Diversity Flags that hang above the Fire Place Lounge in PSU’s Hartman Union Building.
According to Howarth, the International Diversity wall has no official title, leaving the possibility for an official title that could cater to a wide range of diversity factors.
Nicholas Scott, a sophomore at PSU said that “there is much more to diversity than just a person’s nationally or a flag” proposing an idea for a wall to represent the expressions of diversity.
In this wall of expressions Scott proposed that other campus organizations such as the Campus Ministry should be involved in creating a sort of representation of the various religions on campus to better show the true diversity of the PSU community.
To close the forum, participants of the forum were asked to vote on one of the following solutions for the Pride Flag and the International Diversity wall: keep the wall as it is, remove the Pride Flag entirely, change the name of the wall, or to create a new diversity wall.
While no one was in favor of keeping the wall as it is and only two people voted to have the flag removed entirely, the majority of the votes went to either changing the name of the wall or creating a new diversity wall in the school with votes split almost half and half for each.
According to Howarth, the PCD will go before the Student Senate on April 26th to discuss the meaning of the flags on the wall as well as what the wall represents for faculty and students of the school.