The United Minorities Council elected College and Wharton junior Lisa Zhu, who is also a DP columnist, as its new chair at the Greenfield Intercultural Center yesterday evening.
The DP met with Zhu after the election to talk about her plans for the council.
DP: To you, what is the aim of the UMC ?
LZ: UMC is an organization that gives minority students on Penn's campus a platform to raise their concerns through its 18 constituting groups. UMC includes minority groups of differing cultures, races and sexual orientations. On a personal note, as an Asian-American, the UMC gives me a way to express my needs and concerns to the officials, who would otherwise not hear individuals' problems.
DP: Why did you want to run for the position of the UMC chair ?
LZ: I've been allocating a lot of time to minority groups since my freshman year and feel they are often underrepresented and misrepresented on the Penn campus, so I wanted to make sure that minority groups are given their due importance.
DP: What are your plans for the year for the UMC ?
LZ: I have various plans for the year for the UMC. Firstly, I would like to implement a campus-climate survey, so as to provide quantitative evidence of the emotions of the minority students to improve the campus climate for minority students as a whole.
Secondly, Penn recently launched a $3.5 billion fundraising campaign, but there has been no mention of how these funds collected would be spent to improve the diversity on Penn's campus, so I would like to work towards that as well.
And lastly, I would like to increase our visibility on campus, increase our communication with the DP and organize town hall events to update the students and receive their feedback on the UMC. This April is the 30th anniversary of the UMC, so we urge students to look out for scheduled campus events.
DP: How do you intend on uniting the innumerable minority groups on campus?
LZ: I hope to increase a sense of community among the various minority groups, but more importantly, foster relationships at the personal level among all the minority group members.
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