Note: This article is a collaboration between the Fort Collins Coloradoan and the Rocky Mountain Collegian.
Vaniesha Gregory feels uncomfortable walking the halls of her home at Colorado State University.
Gregory,18, said other students in Summit Hall have peppered her with racially insensitive jabs since she transferred to the university earlier this school year. They’ve asked Gregory, who is black, if they could touch her hair, if she could teach them how to twerk, why she was so dark and if she knew her dad.
As tensions escalated across campus with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, they asked her to joke that “white is right.”
She’s one of several minority students pushing for more inclusiveness at the Fort Collins university, most recently campaigning and protesting for a hard-won diversity bill that made history by adding voting seats for minority offices to CSU’s student government.
The bill was passed March 9 by one vote after weeks of discussion, which included protests and debate on social media about the inclusion and representation of minority groups on campus.
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Not all students feel the tension advocates for the bill say exists.
Alex Teahen, 20, said CSU has “one of the most open and accepting student cultures I’ve ever encountered,” even though demographics demonstrate the campus is not significantly racially diverse.
Teahen, who is white, said the university’s demographics are a reflection of the Fort Collins area’s lack of diversity, not of the university’s culture.
CSU’s student population is 71 percent white. Fort Collins’ population is about 78 percent white, according to a five-year estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey.
“If there was a real issue here, I believe the student population would better recognize it,” Teahen said. “I also believe if this was truly a student affairs issue, there would be a lot more of an uproar.”
For Gregory and several other minority students interviewed by the Collegian, the uproar is deafening. Read more here.