Students and faculty will be sharing personal tales of prejudice and their experiences with various “isms” at the Northwest Campus Auditorium tonight.
The speakers will be presenting as part of a student educational event called the ISMs Project, sponsored by the Office of Residential Life’s Intercultural Programming Committee.
The event, which held its inaugural performance last year, has grown and developed under the guidance of Kenya James-Nunley, a coordinator of the project as a representative of the Intercultural Programming Committee.
“Last year, it was primarily for students on the Hill, because it was the first one,” James-Nunley said. “And it’s still for students on the Hill, we just wanted to open it up so that more people are aware that it’s going on and maybe become interested and want to get involved.”
James-Nunley said she got the idea for the event when she attended a similar program at New York University where she had been working as a residence hall director and community development educator.
“I wanted to bring a similar project here to UCLA, and I started to create what was my vision of what I wanted the ISMs Project to be here,” she said.
Students involved in the planning and coordinating of the event said that they felt the speakers’s messages and the message of the event itself are pertinent to the UCLA campus and that there is much to be learned from the project.
“I think it’s a really unique program because it gives students a chance to talk about and to make a social commentary on a personal “˜ism’ that they have faced,” said Elicia Blackford, a fourth-year English student and member of the ISMs Project planning committee.
“Students can be choosing an art form that they enjoy and talking about something that is very personal to them, and I think that it will be very (meaningful) to the people who see it,” she added.
“Isms,” as the program’s coordinators described them, are representations of attitudes that strongly support or oppress certain groups of people and are also representations of ways in which oppression is manifested within a system of domination.
“An “˜ism’ is a stereotype that people make about others without knowing real information. These would be assumptions or general opinions that oppress the individual in some way, shape or form,” said Daisy Oliver, a program coordinator.
The planners of the event, which will be held in the Northwest Campus Auditorium from 7-9 p.m. tonight, are expecting a turnout of over 100 students, many of whom will be on-campus residents from the Hill.
Beyond its potential to educate members of the UCLA community on prejudices and other forms of indirect social oppression, the ISMs Project’s coordinators said they hope that the event will continue in years to come.
“It’s an opportunity for people to have freedom of expression and the platform and channel to express whatever “˜ism’ or issue that they want to talk about,” James-Nunley said. “I hope that it continues to be utilized and is something that will continue in the future for UCLA.”