Panel explores diversity
The Cultural Diversity Awareness Club at National Park College unveiled the new Nighthawk Code during a panel discussion Wednesday on the challenges and opportunities facing diverse populations.
“In the fall of 2017, Dr. (Wade) Derden, vice president for academic affairs, spearheaded a team of individuals including students, staff and faculty to help form the Nighthawk Code,” said Melissa Krafft, president of CDAC. “This code is a set of standards to which
the community at National Park College is held.”
Darla Thurber, special assistant to the president, said while the code “was (Derden’s) brainchild, he spearheaded this, he invited students, faculty and staff to come and actually craft it.”
The standards are laid out by the acronym HAWKS to represent the Nighthawks, she added.
The code states that the “Nighthawks of National Park College have high expectations for one another. These expectations are outlined in the Nighthawk Code, which depicts the common beliefs and expected behaviors of all members of the National Park College community. Adopting the Nighthawk Code creates a community of trust and encourages personal responsibility both on campus and beyond.”
Honor, action, willingness, kindness and scholarship are the five standards the code lays out for student success.
The code was unveiled to guests following the panel discussion comprised of panelists Kai Coggin, local poet, author, and teaching artist; Lorena Fitzpatrick, NPC student; Eric Higgins, retired assistant chief of the Little Rock Police Department; and Veronikha Salazar, associate dean of students at Henderson State University. Each panelist shared the personal challenges they’ve faced and explored the challenges and opportunities communities have to embrace diversity.
“It’s beautiful what (CDAC) are doing, what you’re trying to accomplish here on campus in spreading the message of diversity and inclusion throughout the school, and throughout our city, and our state, and hopefully soon the whole world,” Coggin said. “The major challenges and opportunities facing diverse populations, we’ll start with the challenges. I think one of the big challenges is it’s not a vacuum.
“We have to go out to the real world where the real world doesn’t really reflect what we are trying to do. So bringing the message of diversity and inclusion is easy when we’re all accepting people and we’re all openhearted people, and we all take the time to listen to each other. But sometimes when we go out into the real world where leaders and people are sowing seeds of division, it makes it more difficult to take that message of diversity and take it into your workplace, or take it into the grocery store or when somebody cuts you off in traffic. It’s hard to carry that message, but the most important thing I think that we could do to help would be just to listen.”
Coggin explained that every individual has their own very unique story and “we all have to appreciate each of those differences.”
“The challenge I make to you is to just go out beyond these little circles and be that in the world,” she said. “Listen with your open heart. Listen with a compassionate mind.”
The opportunity, she said, is “seeing the world through all these other different perspectives and making your experience as a human being on this planet that more beautiful and that more rich.”
Coggin shared with the group a poem she wrote to honor Maya Angelou and Martin Luther King Jr., who were connected not only by their activism in the civil rights movement, but their connection through the date April 4 being Angelou’s birthday and the day of King’s assassination 50 years ago.
Fitzpatrick said that coming to the United States from a small town in Mexico in 1988 when she was 17 years old was when she was first exposed to the ideas of diversity the U.S. holds.
“I was raised to embrace everyone, I wasn’t taught that a person was a different color, that a person had limitations,” she said. “I was taught to love everyone for who they were. To help everyone regardless of what they looked like. That was not even a question when I grew up.
“So when I migrated to the United States, I began experiencing rejection in a way and people questioning who I was as a person because I didn’t speak the language, because I looked different, because I had different cultural beliefs, or I lived a different life. But instead of letting others define who I was, I decided to kill them with kindness.”
Fitzpatrick said her experiences taught her to be more compassionate and helpful toward others when they were less than welcoming to her.
“I found myself explaining to my own children or children that I used to take care of because I was a nanny, every single time I experienced this, children were with me,” she said. “So I had to explain to these children that it was not OK, that I had to make sometimes excuses for these people’s behaviors and I had to tell them to be different, to treat them with kindness regardless of their behavior. These are some of the challenges I faced, I’m sure many other people face challenges. I still face challenges every day, but like I said I don’t let them define who I am. I treat everyone with kindness and I’m hoping for a better world.”
Fitzpatrick said she believes there are two major opportunities in this country that many people may not realize they are fortunate for having.
“The number one is in this country everyone has the opportunity to build a better life,” she said. “All you need is a dream, a goal, and the willingness to dedicate yourself to work hard and go above and beyond. In other words, have a great work ethic and you’ll make it, you’ll succeed.
“Number two is that in this country, everybody has the opportunity to get a college education. All we need is the desire, a plan, and the will to aim for a higher education, and for that I’m very grateful.”
Salazar said working in higher education since 2001, particularly with international students, has helped her to better understand cultural diversity.
“I started with international students which did help me to become the person that I am today just trying to understand the cultures of the world,” she said. “Working with international students and realizing the different things that they faced, the challenges that they bring when they come into this country, and realizing that their stories are similar to any other immigrant.”
Salazar said she sees every day as an opportunity to educate people about her background.
“It’s an opportunity to tell people I am Hispanic, but I grew up in Peru speaking Quechua,” she said. “Spanish is not my first language and then they’re like ‘Oh what is that?’ It’s an opportunity to teach people all the time.”
Higgins said looking at diverse communities, one of the challenges populations have even being diverse is “we still segregate ourselves.”
“We still have biases. Implicit biases that we are brought up with,” he said. “And just because I work with people who are different from me, or go to school with people who are different from me, I think that’s OK. … But I still have opinions, I still have a singular story for the other group of individuals.
“I think the challenge is to overcome that. First to recognize. When you close your eyes and someone says African American, what pops up? If someone says Latino or Hispanic, what pops up in your mind? What’s that singular story? We have to challenge ourselves to not buy into that.”
Higgins said individuals have the opportunity to learn from people who are different from them and realize that “we may look alike, but we have different backgrounds.”
“We have different life experiences and we have to embrace that. And there’s people who don’t look like us, and we have to have that same opinion, that same attitude, but how do we cross over?” he said.
Prior to the discussion, CDAC provided lunch, which Higgins said was an opportunity for those in attendance to understand each other better.
“We had an opportunity to sit down and have a meal together,” he said. “That’s really how we cross over the singular story is when we sit down together and have a meal together, and get to know each other as individuals. It’s not just working together with people who are different from you. It’s not just going to school with people who are different from you. It’s actually sitting down and getting to know the person and I think if we do that, then we can overcome our internal biases and we can really learn to see each other as what are and we’re not different races. We’re one race, the human race.”