{"id":62786,"date":"2012-03-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-diversity-summit-attracts-students-from-far-and-wide-to-hear-renowned-speaker\/"},"modified":"2012-03-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T00:00:00","slug":"uri-diversity-summit-attracts-students-from-far-and-wide-to-hear-renowned-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/03\/uri-diversity-summit-attracts-students-from-far-and-wide-to-hear-renowned-speaker\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 Diversity Summit attracts students from far and wide to hear renowned speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, RI- \u2013 March 13, 2012 \u2013 If the 500 students jammed into Edwards Hall Auditorium for a recent program on diversity had planned on low-key, lecture-type experience, speaker Maura Cullen quickly dispelled those notions. <\/p>\n


\nEven with a big crowd assembled for the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Diversity Summit, Cullen had these students moving, talking, joking, standing and sitting to get her points across about diversity, individuality, and commonality. <\/p>\n


\n\t \u201cThe jokes she made relate to us. I don\u2019t know what to expect for the rest of the seminar, but I\u2019m definitely excited,\u201d said Emely Morrobel, a student from the University of Massachusetts Lowell, who attended the daylong conference. <\/p>\n


\nAlthough this thin blonde woman may not have been what most people were expecting, she soon gained respect from the crowd. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cI like how was she able to take different people from different backgrounds and bring them together. This is something I\u2019d like to do when I\u2019m older,\u201d said a student from Central Connecticut State University. <\/p>\n


\nCullen often stopped throughout the seminar to conduct activities involving the audience, so she could get feedback about different issues. Her first activity involved asking everyone to stand up and introduce themselves to at least four other people in the room, telling the audience to act as if each person they were meeting was about to give him or her their dream job. <\/p>\n

\u201cI like how she started the seminar off, talking about the importance of attitude, especially her saying, \u2018attitude determines altitude,\u2019\u201d said Melissa Impett, a senior orientation leader at the 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\nThis started off her discussion on the importance of being an individual and having self-confidence. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cSometimes how we get along is by going along. When making decisions in life, let them be yours. The best way to solve your problems is through your own thinking,\u201d said Cullen.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe projection of an animal onto the large Power Point screen helped Cullen introduce her next point. Some students in the audience looked at the picture and saw a rabbit, while others saw a duck; very few saw both. This demonstration pointed out how people often view each other as one-dimensional, based on size, color, and gender.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s human nature to notice differences in others first, when actually, we are more alike than we think. For example, we clump people by color, mostly just black and white, and completely ignore the fact that there are more Asians than any other people on the planet,\u201d said Cullen.<\/p>\n


\nAt one point, she asked students to stand up if someone close to them had suffered from an eating disorder, and to stay standing if this person ended up dying from it. <\/p>\n


\nAlmost half of the large diverse group of students who had stood up for the first part of the question remained standing for the second part. As members of the audience looked around, it was apparent that different people could have the same struggles.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIt was nice to know that there were other students who had been through similar hardships. It made it easier to connect with them,\u201d said another Central Connecticut State University student. <\/p>\n


\n\t Cullen then shared a story about attending a Mass for her friend\u2019s deceased relative at an all black church. Since she had grown up in a predominantly white community, this experience was anything but usual.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWhen walking in a room where you\u2019re the only person who\u2019s a certain color, you become more conscious of yourself and how others see you,\u201d said Cullen. <\/p>\n


\n\tCullen then created a variety of scenarios involving white students at a predominantly black school, highlighting how they would feel if the roles were reversed. \t

\n\u201cLet\u2019s say you\u2019re the only white kid in a classroom, and the professor calls on you whenever he or she needs a white person perspective; how would that make you feel?\u201d said Cullen. <\/p>\n


\n\tCullen also asked the audience to stand up at different intervals based on whether or not their financial resources ranked at \u201cmore than enough,\u201d \u201cenough,\u201d or \u201cnot enough.\u201d When she asked the audience how they felt about their situation, responses ranked from \u201cgrateful\u201d to \u201cunfair.\u201d <\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe stand-up sit-down activities are a good way to bring up discussion without even speaking,\u201d said Beth Bates, a student at The 溏心vlog免费B站.<\/p>\n


\nThe last point Cullen covered before the first break pertained to gender and how our society only really accepts male and female and tends to exclude those that are transgendered. Many institutions like bathrooms, resident halls, or even prisons do not make accommodations for transgendered people. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIf you think that you don\u2019t know anyone who is transgendered, it\u2019s probably because they haven\u2019t told you,\u201d said Cullen. <\/p>\n


\n\tThe Diversity Summit ended at 4:30 pm, leaving the audience to reflect on different ways to keep an open mind about differences in others. The event was sponsored by Housing and Residential Life. <\/p>\n


\nVictoria Antonelli, an intern at the Communications and Marketing Department, wrote this release. <\/p>\n


\nPictured Above

\nHANDS TOGETHER: Students participate in a diversity activity with Maura Cullen.

\nWORKING TOWARD CHANGE: Students happily high-five Maura Cullen during the seminar.

\n溏心vlog免费B站 Department of Communications & Marketing photo by Michael Salerno Photography.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, RI- \u2013 March 13, 2012 \u2013 If the 500 students jammed into Edwards Hall Auditorium for a recent program on diversity had planned on low-key, lecture-type experience, speaker Maura Cullen quickly dispelled those notions. Even with a big crowd assembled for the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Diversity Summit, Cullen had these students moving, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}