iMPrint Magazine - Editor’s Blog

iMPrint is proud to announce the publication of the second installment of iMPrint In Depth. This semester’s topic is racial discrimination on college campuses, one of the most important issues facing American universities today.

As Aaron King details in his excellent piece, there’s been a flurry of racial incidents in the news in the past few months. The noose hangings at Columbia and Maryland (among other schools). The racist parties at the University of Illinois. The Genarlow Wilson case. The Jena Six. As the iMPrint staff sat down and discussed what we wanted to explore through In Depth this semester, these events stuck out in our minds. Questions kept popping up: Is racial discrimination in this country on the rise? What about on college campuses specifically? Has the past taught us anything? Are we really as far along as a country now as compared to 50, 100 years ago as we think we are, or is it all a mirage?

Ultimately, these questions are probably too broad for a definitive “yes” or “no” answer, and are definitely too large for a small group of college journalists to tackle in an online magazine site. What we hope to do through iMPrint In Depth: Race and College, however, is look at the issue as thoroughly and fairly as possible. By examining how the present stacks up to the past, by examining how September 11th and the Virginia Tech shootings affected Muslim and Asian students, by examining the college anti-prejudice movement, and how art affects how we perceive ourselves and others, we hope to at least get you thinking about the topic, questioning your own assumptions and the relationships in your own life. As Ithaca College professor Sean Eversley-Bradwell concludes in “Then and Now”: “I don’t know what the cultural shift is, but I’m saying that we should probably pay closer attention to the signs.”

Please join us in this dialogue on race and college life. Leave comments on the stories you read, post to our blogs, and e-mail us (you can reach me at gryan1@ithaca.edu, and our writers’ e-mail addresses are located in their staff profiles). We look forward to hearing from you, and we hope you learn as much about race and college through In Depth that we learned in compiling it.