Just shy of 50 Bradley students braved the cold weather to trek to Marty Theatre Thursday night for Dialogues on Diversity, an event hosted by the Activities Council of Bradley University (ACBU).
Ron Jones, an EMMY award-winning improvist, hosted the program that was designed to tie historical events to today’s society with a dash of humor sprinkled throughout to keep students interested.
Instead, profanity-laced statements and prizes for participation that ranged from Pringles to Pop-Tarts seemed to confuse more students than it informed.
One student, sophomore Briana Mathews, said she was expecting a group discussion, which was what posters for the event promoted. Instead, Jones did most of the talking to a small number of students who participated.
“It’s not what I expected,” Mathews said. “I thought it would be more engaging, more peer-to-peer [which would] allow us to pick each other’s brains to allow us to get to the hard-hitting problems here at Bradley and in the world.”
While it may not have been done how Mathews preferred, Jones did discuss problems that were going on in the world.
After showing students photos of various protests throughout history and asking students to identify what the were, Jones offered a solution of sorts to students on how to make people take notice of an issue.
“Unless people care, they won’t care,” Jones said. “How do you make people care? I’ve shown you a bunch of examples: you put your body where the problem is. That’s what I’m asking you to do now.”
Jones also touched on how he believes most younger people are unwilling to attend events such as Dialogues on Diversity, despite the technology they possess that makes it easy.
“You are the most interconnected generation in the history of the world,” Jones said. “You have the ability to connect with everyone on this campus with the touch of a few buttons, yet the only people that show up at the events are the ones who give a s**t.”
A rather prophetic statement, given what ACBU event coordinator Mackenzie Clauss said when asked how the event went.
“I think for our first time we wanted to promote it and get people interested,” Clauss said. “We talked about how hard it was to sometimes get people to come to these events. It’s not just a boring lecture, it’s very exciting and upbeat.”
That may be the case, but students like Mathews who attended were not looking for an “exciting and upbeat” discussion. Instead, Mathews suggested switching the format to better fit what she believed the event was going to be like to begin with.
“Change the speaker, change the content, more peer-to-peer engagement,” Mathews said. “He [Jones] spent so much time talking about pictures and posters that the conversation didn’t really get to the point.”
For more information on Jones and his show “The Black-Jew Dialogues,” visit www.theblackjewdialogues.com.
A more detailed look at the presentation, including photos from the event itself, can be found in the audio slideshow below.