The Center for Civic Life at Ashland University organized a forum title “Are stereotypes limiting your world?” The forum took place at the Eagles landing and it invited students to have an open discussion whether or not stereotypes affected their college experience. 

Jacquelyn Dambrosio, Miki Yamamura, Zula Kile and Abigail Melton, members of the CCL advisory board, took the initiative to discuss this problem and Emeritus Professor Louise Fleming- Dufala, director of CCL  and Judy White, community coordinator of CCL worked as a team to hold this forum.

This is the first year that CCL has focused their forums on college students. The goal of these forums is to have a conversation, where people can listen to each other and find what their different ideas share in common.

Melton thinks that this type of forum welcomes students to share their ideas without the fear of being judged.

“I want students to feel comfortable enough that they can say what is going on in their minds, learn and grow and figurate things together,” said Melton. “Everybody realizes how stereotyping affects how we look at people and how we interact with people.

Previous to the forum, Yamamura, Kile and Dambrosio interviewed AU students asking them if they thought stereotypes were present on campus and if it affected their lives on campus.

“Some of the evidence showed that stereotyping is a problem, over 60 percent of the people thought that it was a problem in certain aspects of their college life,” said Dambrosio. 

Around 75 percent that is a problem in every single organization.

Kile highlighted that the forum wanted to discuss about how students are very likely the stay within certain social circles.

“I think it is almost unconscious, as soon as you get to the university you are going to join a bunch of things, you are going to join clubs, sport teams, and it is really easy to get comfortable with those people and groups so students close themselves off meeting other people” said Kile.

Melton mentioned on the forum how being part of a living learning community limited her opportunities since she is always surrounded by the same people.  

At the end of the forum, students came up with solution plans that can be taken to address this topic. 

They agreed that there should be more opportunities to bring diverse people together, more information about all the different activities held in campus and more cultural education.