Gonzaga University - Spires Yearbook (Spokane, WA)

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THEY D0 'T GO OUT A RECRUIT THEM U LESS THEY PLAY BA KETBALL How does Gonzaga appear to the minority students who attend it? Perhaps it would be best to let them tell it in their own words. My definition of a university is a gathering place for the free exchange of a person's ideas, academically and socially. Now academically it's real far out. Socially we're lack- ing because all you have here is one particular social group-in this university it's a white upper middle class. If they're not in there economically, then their attitudes are from the white upper middle class, and what few minorities you have here, the majority of them have white upper middle class attitudes. Their primary interest isn't educating the student. They're Worried more about their image and they're trying to attract a particular type of student, other types of students they don't care so much if they get them at all. I doubt very much if they go to the re- servation to recruit Indian students. The only reason why they recruited any last year is because they got word in July that they had to find forty Indian students to come to Gonzaga. Here the faculty wouldn't get off their ass for anything. If you want to get some- thing going, you go and talk to these guys. They'll sit in their chairs, reading their books, and refer you to somebody else, but usually you got to dig up all this stuff your- self. The only way you're going to get something done around here is to get two hundred screaming people. They don't listen to reason. Like the Do You Care-it was 'cool', but it didn't do nothing, it didn't break the cycle. They have to redirect their priorities, and this school has some screwy priorities. They're up looking downg they think everything's alright, but everything isn't alright. The only thing that's going to change them around here is if they feel threatened, I mean really threatened. Then they might do something. Look on the emblem of Gonzaga and there is a little tepee down in the corner, this school was founded as a missionary school, but they really haven't lived up to it. They haven't made any attempts to recruit people or give them any kind of help. The only money comes from the government, but Gonzaga makes it look like they are giving it. They don't really take us seriously. People come to Gonzaga with a certain attitude, and they leave with that same at- titude-most of them not changed in any kind of way. As far as getting along and deal- ing with people they haven't learned anything. There are a few exceptions-people that really search, but they don't have any kind of classes on minorities at all. If we're going to get along in this society, we're going to have to get to know each other. As long as everything is geared to the predominant society, as if we don't have anything to offer, nothing will ever change. People that go here don't know nothin' about the other sideg they think this is life. This place attracts the kind of Black that wouldn't want to be associated with a lot of Blacks. Here you can lose yourself, and you don't have to face the situation until you go to the outside world, because Spokane itself is isolatedf, , One thingI can say about Gonzaga, it has a sense of community though, because it is smaller, you can get to know people real well. This year I expected a lot more out of Rose fGanglel. She's doing the same thing as has been done in the past. Student government screwed up the minorities, es- pecially with their budgets. They got the nerve to put 'Third World Committee pre- sents' on every one of those damn speakers-we're not even invited to the dinners be- fore. We were supposed to be invited to the dinners and have some say on what goes on. There haven't been any Asian speakers. The school really bought us off, the minorities affairs department, which is headed by Mrs. Issac, well she has a title of minorities affairs director, and what she is doing is zero. I've never been contacted by her, and as far as any action on her part to get any money or any programs through the administration for the minority students on cam- pus has been nothing. Her job right now, I guess, is a research project with high school students, and that's where she has been focusing all her work while she sits in the base-

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