Minority students at the University of Kansas want a separate student government of their own. Isn’t that segregation?

The Associated Press reports.

Kansas Minority Students Seek Parallel University Government

Minority students at the University of Kansas, frustrated by what they see as a lack of attention to issues they care about, are pushing for an independent governing body to represent their interests – and have won the school’s recognition and funding to start the long process that could allow them to do so.

Students insist they’re not trying to set up a wholly separate student government, with the thorny “but equal” questions that could spur. Details on how the arrangement would work haven’t been decided, but advocates say they want a structure whose focus on social justice issues and multicultural students would complement the work of the traditional student government.

The novel approach at Kansas is something experts see as the latest example of the anger and impatience many minority students feel after generations of exclusion from campus government.

“It’s important to raise the question of why would students of color want to go off and create a parallel student government,” said Shaun Harper, executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. “I think people need to understand that students of color don’t want to be segregated. What they want is inclusion, and fair and equitable funding of programs and initiatives that reflect their interests. They’ve reached a point where they are tired of waiting, because it’s clearly not going to happen. They are saying ‘Just give us our own thing.'”


 
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