An e-mail was recently sent out to lots of multicultural student orgs, scholarship programs and stakeholders on campus and in our community that reads as follows:

Hi Student Leaders:

In an effort to improve the images we have of diversity on campus, we’re holding a photo session at three specific spots on Wednesday morning, Nov. 10. We’re providing bagels, coffee and the guarantee that you’ll have some fun helping us to secure images of diversity on campus. Let’s show the world we are here at UW-Madison…and doing very well thank you! The times and locations are listed below – 15 minutes or the whole hour – whatever you can do will be greatly appreciated. If you can’t make it this time, or if there’s a flood of people this time, there will be other sessions at other locations in the future.

Please share this announcement with your members and friends.

…

Sincerely,

University Relations
Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate

I would like to propose a response article, below:

Dear Office of the Vice Provost on Diversity and Climate,

I am curious to know who you are referring to in your e-mail when you use the word “we.” Who is “we”? You and your coworkers? The Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate? Or did Biddy Martin order your office into it after realizing the message she sent to the world with her stunning appearance in the “Teach Me How To Bucky” music video? And since I don’t know how to refer to the “we” you speak of, I must refer to you as such.

Since the “we” plans to create a space for diverse students to show off the diversity we usually wear, I hope they have put a little bit of thought into such an endeavor. I am suspicious of a diversity photo session in which the university determines between what times and where said diversity is to occur. I mean, isn’t it ironic that the “we” has decided to host a photo session just 30 minutes before the MSC’s Nacho Average Wednesday where “diversity” will assemble, even without the “we” having to send an e-mail out?

I would be absolutely open to discussing with the “we” (and hopefully every one of the “we” would be in the room) about how I would like to “show the world that I am here at UW-Madison” because I would love to tell you all about how I am NOT “doing very well, thank you!” And I find it very presumptuous that you have spoken for me.

I am not doing well because on Thursday I was forced to listen to my classmates’ discourse on how colonization is ultimately good for me. I am not doing well because the LGBT Campus Center participates in the systematic silencing of the stories of queer people of color by failing to report on the homicides of five queer black folks from Milwaukee since September. I am not doing well because last week The Badger Herald glorified a white student for openly dressing as what he thinks an authentic Native American looks like. I am not doing well because no matter how much the students of color I know work toward liberation, we have to be faced by such complicated questions as the one you have presented us with: pragmatically approach this request and dance for the Office of Admissions or find a way to say “No” that doesn’t compromise our hope for change.

You guaranteed a fun time at the photo session, and there will be dancing. Can I ask you to consider that bribing hundreds of students of color with bagels to pose for the diversity camera isn’t really all that different than just picking up a black person and throwing him in the picture? I mean, aren’t you just photoshopping our reality?

I will not be eating your bagels; I will be at Nacho Average Wednesday.

Thanks,

Dakota Alcantara-Camacho ([email protected]) is a UW sophomore.