This year marks the Multicultural Center’s 40th anniversary at MU.
Opened in 1972, the MCC originally focused on academic retention services and provided tutoring to students. In the 1990s its goals changed, and the office shifted to a program that was more oriented toward diverse cultures. It increased its portfolio to include Hispanic and Asian cultures.
Though the structure of the MCC has changed, other things have remained the same, such as the diversity education offered to students. Its primary goal is to support Hispanic and Asian Americans while providing supplemental support to Jewish and Muslim students through a variety of programs.
One of the programs, the Diversity Peer Educators, is a group of students dedicated to promoting awareness of different cultures on campus.
Beginning in 2006, the MCC also began to provide orientations for Hispanic and Asian American students, celebrations of cultures and religious discovery series.
The MCC has given a voice to populations not usually represented in the Missouri Students Association through Four Front, a group representing 16 identity-based student organizations, MCC coordinator Pablo Mendoza said. The minority council represents the interests of ethnic, gender, religious and sexual orientation issues.
“Asian and Hispanic Americans have become fairly active in their advocacy for their needs,” Mendoza said. “It has become a council that is representative of the needs of the students.”
The MCC has become more visible in the past 40 years and has become a safe space for students, Four Front chairwoman Ana Gutierrez-Gamez said.
“When I come back in 40 years, I want it to grow,” Gutierrez-Gamez said. “I want it to expand the programs that are already here and expose students to diversity.”
As for the next 40 years, Mendoza said he hopes the MCC can continue to be a safe space for students and can provide intensive training for how to be politically active not only at MU, but also in the community. The MCC offers Train the Trainers programs to teach students how to run their own diversity education events.
In addition to stressing advocacy more, Mendoza said he hopes MU can look to other Midwestern universities as a roadmap to begin the university’s ethnic studies program. As of the Fall 2012 semester, MU offers a degree in black studies but does not offer classes in other ethnic studies, such as Asian culture, as some other universities do.
In the future he said he hopes there will be advocacy centers for each population instead of a single office for all of them, similar to those at the University of Illinois.
The University of Illinois has been the leader in multicultural expansion on its campus as the first university in the Midwest to require all freshman students to take a cultural studies credit. Students have a choice of any credit that focuses on non-Western or United States minority cultures.
Though bringing a similar requirement to MU could be difficult, it would teach students how to be culturally appropriate and show them how to work with different types of people, Mendoza said.
“I hope that this campus becomes more culturally diverse demographically,” Mendoza said. “Maybe as soon as 2020, there will be a requirement for freshmen to take a cross-cultural class.”
Students involved at the MCC also said they hope to see the center grow.
“It is a great place to hang out with sources of information,” junior Robert Green said. “In the next 40 years, I hope it can expand its programming even further.”
