After a deadline extension earlier this month allowed a few more entries to trickle in, the committee planning the University's "Race, Sex and God" competition is reviewing the approximately 14 student proposals it received.
Committee members have already reviewed and awarded funding to nine proposals, and they said they plan to finish reviews by Monday. Students will have until Oct. 17 to finish their projects, which will be exhibited in a festival that weekend. The planning committee has not worked out the logistics of how many final prizes they will award or what the prizes will be.
"In the meeting, we were all very impressed by the proposals," said senior Jessie Pinkrah, a member of the planning committee. "Students have come up with some very creative projects."
The majority of the proposals��which range from videos to murals��have not requested the full $200 budget that the program offered to each project.
With one exception, all projects have been done in teams, and some projects involve entire dormitories, such as Blackwell Dormitory's plan to create a collage incorporating each hall within the house. The planning committee has received proposals from Few Quadrangle, one proposal from the West-Edens Link, one proposal each from Giles, Alspaugh and Blackwell Dormitories and two proposals each from Jarvis and Southgate Dormitories.
The competition is part of a series of events on campus this year entitled "Beyond the Comfort Zone," which aims to encourage students to engage in meaningful dialogue about diversity, sexuality, religion and the connections among such topics. The series is jointly organized by the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Office of Institutional Equity, the Division of Student Affairs, the Department of Religion and the Chapel. The E.L. Weigand Foundation is funding the project.
"It is an opportunity to reflect on how [students] are shaping their friendships, how they are shaping their own identity [and] what it means to develop relationships with people that are different than you," said Evangeline Weiss, OIE cross-cultural relations specialist. "I have been very pleased with the level of student participation," she said.
The "Beyond the Comfort Zone" program kicked off last Thursday with a showing of Brooklyn Babylon in Griffith Film Theater, a Romeo and Juliet spin-off between a Rastafarian hip hop singer--played by Tariq Trotter of the band The Roots--and an orthodox Jewish woman. The movie was followed by a discussion.
"I would say between 50 and 75 people came," said Colleen Scott, assistant dean of students, who helped organize the competition. "[Alpha Tao Omega fraternity] had a really great turn out for the movie and discussion."
The planning committee is also working to coordinate a panel discussion in early November and another film and discussion related to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day next January. The guest speakers and topic have not yet been finalized.
The "Beyond the Comfort Zone" series has funding for this year, but officials said they have not decided the program's long-term future.
"This project evolved because there was some overflow funding.... Because of that I cannot say whether we'll be continuing it," Weiss said. "These are important conversations and important topics, and if we secure funding we should continue this work on an ongoing basis."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.