CSM students celebrate diversity

Strive to create global awareness

Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009

Communications students at the College of Southern Maryland's Prince Frederick campus joined millions around the world last week celebrating human diversity and creating awareness of global discrimination issues culminating in United Nations Human Rights Day on Thursday.

"[Our goal is] just to create awareness for our students —to educate them in terms of not only what types of discrimination they may see but what exists around the world as well," explained Denise Gilmer Knudson, assistant professor of communications arts and humanities. "Our campus is participating [in Human Rights Day] through several different activities."

One of the activities popular with many of the students was an interactive display in the main lobby of the campus. Named The Human Race Machine, the display resembles a coin-operated photo machine where the subject sits and views his or her image on a computer screen. Through technology similar to that used by the FBI to locate child kidnapping victims, subjects in the machine can add years to their appearance to see what they will look like when older. The machine can also simulate facial anomalies that may be caused by stroke, injury or paralysis.

Most significantly, however, "The Human Race Machine allows participants to see themselves with the facial characteristics of six different races mapped onto their own visage," according to a flyer from Wolfman Productions, distributor of the exhibit.

"I can see here what I would look like if I were Asian; it's pretty cool," said sophomore Stephanie Seay of Port Republic.

Colleen Nagel of Lusby agreed. "It is cool," she said. "You can line up your face in the machine and make yourself older so you can see what you're going to look like when you turn 45."

"Most of the projects are from two of Miss Knudson's classes and she encouraged [her students] to do them for extra credit," explained Dennis Frostbutter, a sophomore from Prince Frederick. "All of them address various types of discrimination — like age, sex and gender, appearance, race, religion, body image. They did projects and presented them to their classes as part of their grade for their communications class."

"Some students have created posters that look at various types of discrimination around the world, so they participated that way," Knudson said. "Some of our communications classes have given speeches and done debates related to these various topics as well, so we hope to connect the academic and the student services side of the campus together to promote this week and we've had pretty good turnout and participation.

"[There is] also a film series called ‘Race: The Power of an Illusion — the Differences between Us.' We've looked at different issues relative to the theme of Human Rights Week, which is to end discrimination," she added. "The film series looks at race, specifically, and it talks about the many myths and misconceptions related to race that, honestly, we're all learning.

"The first part of the film series looked at genetics and [the misconception that] race is somehow a biological difference — that because of race there's this huge biological difference. In reality, there is no single gene for race — there is a variety of various genes that makes us who we are. We're so much more alike than we are different; the differences are really minute. You can just see the light bulb come on with students, ‘Wow, I didn't understand that.'"

Following the film, the students had a discussion with adjunct faculty member Samuel Oduyela, originally from Nigeria, who came to the United States six years ago. "The message is that discrimination is not an option — it is a zero tolerance situation," Oduyela said. "I've seen it all. I looked at it every day in my country and have a wide background in terms of diversity. I have seen and lived it and that better prepared me to come and live in the United States of America. I find it very easy to find my way here because I've seen it before and I've found a way of beating all those barriers and that is what has brought me to where I am now.

"People are people, regardless of their color — what makes you what you are is your intellect, not the color of your skin."

rrenneisen@somdnews.com