Thursday, November 1, 2007
Nooses hanging in a school yard and a young, black woman who was tortured inspired Christopher Reine to restart the University of Kansas chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Chris Eelacruz, Coffeeville, Kan. senior, and Christopher Reine, Kansas City, Mo. senior, discuss their plans for the new chapter of the NAACP that they recently started at KU Tuesday evening in the Multicultural Resource Center. Both students look forward to promoting the association at the school in the upcoming semester.
Reine, Kansas City, Mo., senior and president of the NAACP at the University, said his mentor, Robert Page, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, suggested Reine work to bring back the NAACP chapter to the University.
Reine said recent racial injustices including the Jena six, where six black students were charged with second degree attempted murder of a white student after a group of white students hung nooses in a Louisiana schoolyard, and Megan Williams, a 20-year-old black woman who was kidnapped, tortured and raped by six white individuals, were part of the inspiration for restarting the group.
“I hope that we are taken seriously, that the campus sees us as an organization who is trying to put forth the effort to change people’s views on how they perceive other races,” Reine said.
Reine said he was still working on getting the chapter together. He said they put together their executive board and were working on recruitment.
Koga Moffer, Overland Park junior, said she joined the chapter to bring attention to racial issues. She said that at a predominately white school, it was easy to forget about the issues going on in the rest of the nation.
“If we can touch just one person, just look outside of your little perfect world and realize that there’s other things going on with people, and they are not asking for it,” Moffer said. “Megan Williams didn’t ask to be kidnapped and raped. I just want people to have a broader view of what life is like for other people.”
Chris DeLaCruz, Coffeyville senior and first vice president of the NAACP at the University, said he felt that there was apathy toward racial issues on campus. He said the University needed a student organization that rallied against injustice. He said that members could promote the organization in the direction they wanted it to go.
“If people don’t like what’s going on, please join and voice your opinions,” DeLaCruz said.
Reine said the chapter planned several mobilizations, which are basically rallies and protests, for the next semester.
DeLaCruz said one of the first issues they would address was the possibility of the Jubilee Café closing down. He said that although it was not directly related to civil rights issues, it was an important human rights issue.
“The right to eat and the right to survive are things that view as important. We don’t want it to become where all we are doing is complaining about civil rights,” DeLaCruz said. “We care about all people and the Jubilee Café is a good example at that.”
Other mobilizations include protesting against Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, a group that is working to ban affirmative action. Reine said they also wanted to help get more minority faculty and staff, create a brown bag discussion series on civil rights issues and have a pizza and politics event with an influential minority leader.
For more information, contact Chris DeLaCruz at Chris.DeLeCruz.KU@gmail.com.
Edited by Meghan Murphy
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