Eagle Hour

On Sept. 13, USU Eastern’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion hosted a student forum to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality. The meeting held in the Jennifer Leavitt Student center DCI office filled the room with a diverse crowd and was moderated by Student Body VP Alex Anderson.
Evette Allen, Ph.D., organized the event to promote important discussions among the student body and get the word out about the CDI’s goals. The CDI was created in 2015 to find strategic ways to educate students students by introducing them to the CDI space. In an email Dr. Allen said she started Eagle Hour to “assist our students in learning about varying perspectives in an educational manner. The ultimate goal is to prepare our student to interact in an increasingly diverse world and to critically think about how they can dismantle systems of oppression and marginalization.”
The atmosphere of the meeting created a feeling of openness in which several students voiced their anger, hope, concerns and opinions on the issues involving police brutality, the need to support both the Black Lives Matters and Blue Lives Matters organizations. Many student’s felt that the issues ran much deeper than what the news is reporting and expressed frustration at the current climate.
Allen expressed enthusiasm for the meeting saying, “for our first event of this type it went really well. Many thanks to Alex Anderson, who is the Executive VP and assists with events for the Center for Diversity and Inclusion. She made sure she did research prior to the event to have insightful and educational discussion with facts. While opinions are welcomed, it is certainly important to have facts. I would have liked to see more students who are struggling with concepts such as diversity, inclusion, and social justice. We need everyone in order move toward a more just society, and that means that everyone should be educated on what they can do to dismantle oppressive systems.”
Eagle Hour will be hosted on the second Tuesday of every month in the CDI Office in the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center room 214.