Students awarded for keeping Dr. King’s dream alive

By SEAN GARNER

Senior Reporter

Thirty-six years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech and one day before Barack Obama became the first African-American president of the United States, four Oakland University students were recognized for their commitment to improving race relations on campus.

Lisa Daily, Jasmine Rudolph, Relando Thompkins and Norris Chase each received the 17th annual Keeper of the Dream Scholarship Award on Monday, Jan. 19 in front of a crowd of over 200 people in the Oakland Center’s Banquet Rooms.

The scholarship is sponsored by the OU Center for Multicultural Initiatives.

CMI’s director Omar Brown-El said one of the goals of the award is to show the community the progress that continues to be made in race relations. The award recognized student efforts to break down racial stereotypes and promote interracial understanding.

“We are trying to promote Dr. King’s legacy, his vision, his dream,” Brown-El said. “We are trying to say that today’s students have the opportunity to go to college and get an education.”

“These students exemplify the ideals of Dr. King in terms of their educational pursuits as well as their promoting the breaking down of racial lines,” he said.

The ceremony was highlighted by the keynote speech of world famous actor and distinguished civil rights activist Danny Glover.

Glover helped organize the longest student strike in American history during his college days at San Francisco State University that led to the establishment of an ethics department at SFSU.

He told the crowd Monday that while there are many positive developments in race relations going on around the world, patience and constant pursuit of justice are still necessary.

“A movement is a process, not an event,” Glover said. “How do we mobilize all these very different strands of resistance at this particular point in time? [King] understood clearly that a movement is based on the vocal organizing of men and women.”

“The human condition”

Thompkins, a social work major, said in a prerecorded speech shown at the ceremony that he “longs to find a way to improve the human condition.”

Thompkins interned at Oakland County’s Children’s Village and served as a mentor at GEAR UP and at CMI, and said that improving the human condition mainly consists of working for equality.

“To me, improving the human condition means establishing a society where each individual has the same value placed on their lives, where no one is considered better than anyone else,” Thompkins said. “Like Danny Glover was talking about, it is a process to improve things from what America once was into what America could become. America could truly live up to the ideals that were written into the Constitution, but I think we have [a] long way to go still before we reach that mark.”

Barriers between people

Rudolph, a senior nursing and bio-medical engineering major who plans to attend medical school after graduation, said she wants to break down social barriers that still exist on campus.

“We’re advocates of anything on campus that is positive and will help break down barriers of communication,” Rudolph said. “I’m more so concerned about the barriers between organizations on campus. We have over 100 student organizations on campus, and a lot of times they don’t even interact amongst one another.”

“I want people to know that if you’re Asian. You don’t only have to go to the Asian celebration, you can also go to the African-American celebration.”

Daily, a junior nursing major, said fostering racial harmony and equity has been one of her major prerogatives since arriving at OU from “tiny” Kingston, Mich.

“It is incredibly rewarding because I really have tried to do a lot of things to break down multicultural and racial barriers and try to show everybody that we are judged by our character and not what we look like,” Daily said.

Daily, the only white recipient of the Keeper of the Dream Award, described herself as an “all-American country girl” and said that growing up in a community like Kingston helped inform her about the importance of racial unity.

“By being from such a homogeneous area and now being in such a diverse place, it is really refreshing so that you can see all these different people interact and show how other parts of the world really are.”

Each recipient said they strive to achieve the values of King regardless of any recognition.

“I feel like it’s a human duty, it’s our responsibility,” Rudolph said.

A monthlong celebration

Several past winners were in attendance at both the ceremony and a luncheon held afterwards. Brown-El said that many of the past winners still act as ambassadors for OU and remain committed to the ideals the award represents.

“We have 17 years of history behind us and those students are doing wonderful things in the community and their professions,” he said. “We invite all our past winners back every year, and many of them returned for the event today.”

Monday’s event was the first of many planned for OU’s African-American Celebration Month. Its theme this year is “The Journey of Black Political and Economic Empowerment.”

The events run from Jan. 19 – Feb. 19 and include campus visits from black professionals such as Wayne County Prosecutor Kim Worthy on Feb. 12 and neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson on Feb. 5.