Thank You for No Support

Northern Illinois University lies west, about 60 miles of Chicago, home to one of the most diverse cities in the Countries. When the young adults are then deciding on college, NIU is an option for many. One will know that NIU’s campus will be diverse. Going off of that, with so many different races on this campus, there will be so many events that will be occurring because everybody will have different ideas on what to do for the community. In this past April of 2014, there were over 20 events that I know of from all different cultures on this campus! From my Fraternity, we hosted our annual Miss Latina 2014 Cultural Pageant which was the biggest event of the year! Latino Student Alliance put on an all-day conference in which over 300 students attended, bringing a National & Poet World Cup Champ & a big time Hip-hop activism group. Black Male Initiative (BMI) hosted their biggest event of the year also, The Apollo Show, in which many students come out to perform their talents and a large crowd is always a guarantee.

One thing that bothered me is the media publicity that Tugs gets from NIU itself and the Northern Star. I want to say this with all respect to the IFC Greeks, but of all the different events that happen on this campus not being put on by NIU, why does NIU publicize Tugs? Like for example, one thing I have mentioned to a Greek Life advisor is that it would be awesome to have the NIU Facebook page publicize photos from all the events, not the NIU Greeks Page, the NIU page itself. For example, we have our Miss Latina Cultural Pageant which was our best event of the year, and there was no support from NIU, and the Northern Star had 2 pics and 3 sentences regarding Miss Latina. We were fortunate to have 2 pictures in my opinion, but that was it. Our Stroll Competition from last November had a picture of our winner Kappa Pi Beta in the Northern Star and a paragraph on it also. And it’s an amazing event with all this dancing, yet NIU didn’t go out of their way to publicize with pictures or more. Same this weekend with Alpha Phi Omega on their duck race fundraiser. It received a photo album on Facebook with over 50 pictures, but yet others do not get.

An interesting connection I see among this is that all this publicity from the School is directed towards the White Race. All other minorities, have not received any, Asians, Latinos, and Blacks. There are plenty of flyers all around campus that help promote these events, and I know NIU Media Services can’t attend them all, but it would be better if they can attend to more than the none they already attend. Miss Latina’s purpose was to showcase the NIU community the Latino culture that we come from, but without the help of NIU, it can’t help be done. The minority disadvantage is still here, though it is not shown directly. If one thinks about it, then they can see. What is wrong with our events as we all do it for the community? Are they not elegant or something, or does NIU think they are not good? It really ticks me off to witness the no help from the campus itself in helping out all races. It really frustrates me, but I can’t find the solution to fix as it is not in my hands to do so.