The “One Mizzou” campaign meant to celebrate diversity at MU is nearly ready for its launch date, Missouri Students Association President Eric Woods said.
“Did I think that it would ever become this big?” Woods said. “No, I didn’t at all. I’m really proud of where it’s gone.”
The campaign is set to begin April 7 outside of the Student Center. At the event students who sign the One Mizzou banner will receive T-shirts and free food, courtesy of Campus Dining Services.
Woods said Chancellor Brady Deaton has agreed to speak and that he is completely behind the cause.
“There’s going to be a lot of administrators there, so we’re hoping to get a good student showing as well,” Woods said.
Not only administrators, but also faculty members are backing the cause.
Graduate Professional Council President Kristofferson Culmer attended an informal meeting of some faculty at The Hiedelberg on March 15, where he said they discussed how they could get involved with the One Mizzou initiative.
“Basically what the meeting was about was to explore creating a grassroots faculty diversity initiative to coincide with what the student leaders are doing on the student side,” Culmer said. “A number of faculty are interested in taking part in this initiative to highlight the diverse nature of Mizzou.”
In the meeting, organized by Chief Diversity Officer Roger Worthington, the faculty seemed already in tune with what the students are planning.
“Without any prompting of the information that students talked about, the faculty were pretty much on the same page,” Culmer said.
Since Culmer attended both the task force meetings and the faculty meeting, he said he is excited to see both of these groups work together for One Mizzou.
“Definitely in the future, I think the students and faculty will collaborate on this initiative,” Culmer said. “This must be a university wide effort, so it is important that everyone is involved. We don’t know exactly how yet since this is just getting off the ground, but we are looking to make this a strong initiative.”
At last week’s MSA meeting, discussion included whether to use the projected $25,000 to $55,000 carryover from the College Readership Program Fee to fund the campaign. Monday, the Department of Student Life decided to completely fund One Mizzou, rather than utilizing this carryover.
“To avoid setting a bad precedent for using projected carryover, it was decided that this was the best course of action,” Woods said. “Carryover from the fees will be used to reimburse Student Life at the end of the fiscal year.”
These funds would be used to purchase materials for the month, including a banner to hang in the Student Center and a calendar of events. He said the task force has been pulling together events for the calendar and encourages any student group to submit ideas to be included.
“We really just want anybody who feels like they have an event that has to do with community or unity on campus,” Woods said. “We want people to come forward and suggest events. We’d be happy to advertise those events.”
