Minority students fighting to keep seats

OGDEN — Minority students at Weber State University are afraid they may lose their voice at the Ogden school with a proposed change to representation on the Student Senate.

Hispanic, Native American and international students are a few of the groups that would lose their seats on the Student Senate under a change to dissolve nine minority-specific seats, replacing them with only four generic minority spots.

"It's un-American, it's un-Weber," senior Marty Schroader said at a hearing on the proposal Friday. "These are people who are trying to make difference, so why are we trying to squoosh it?"

The plan, sponsored by Student Senator Chris Ross, would retain the eight seats for college-specific senators, plus one each for nontraditional students, undeclared majors and students on the Davis Campus. Four diversity chairs would then represent all nine subcategories of minorities on campus, including disabled students, ethnic minorities and veterans.

Ross said he drafted the change to actually give a "stronger voice" to those minorities. His plan also would set up "diversity panels" for specific minorities. Groups of those panels would then be represented by one of the four diversity senators.

The diversity panels would "work hand-in-hand with the senator to address those kind of issues," Ross said. In addition, he said having fewer obligatory diversity seats might encourage more minority students to run for the college-specific slots or even for Senate president.

But international student Pacome Zokou said the move is an attempt to squelch the minority viewpoint at Weber State. The college is more than 61 percent Caucasian, and Zokou said the white student senators feel the minority seats have too much power. (Currently, the nine diversity seats outnumber the eight college-specific spots.)

"If you look at the spirit of this bill, you want to have the majority making the decision for the minority," Zokou, a Paris native, said. "We really are strong on the Senate floor, and that bugs the other senators."

The diversity slots on the Student Senate were designated almost 23 years ago after communications professor Richard Sline noticed the homogenous student government. Sline said nontraditional students ranging from different races to students who lived in the dormitories were noticeably absent from campus activities.

Working with students, Sline remodeled the Senate to include the nine diversity spots. Each year, however, he said there is an effort to get rid of the seats.