University of Wisconsin Video Touting Diversity Comes Up Short
Filed in Campus Racial Incidents on October 8, 2019
The student homecoming committee at the University of Wisconsin-Madison posted a video online touting the university’s diversity. After the 90-second video was posted, criticism from alumni and students on the lack of students of color in the video, prompted the committee to pull the video off the internet.
The video was entitled “Home is where Wi are.” It touted the vast numbers of students and the diversity of the student body. But the video showed mostly White students participating in activities. The committee had asked student groups to submit videos that would be incorporated into the final product, but during the editing process, the diversity of the student body was not adequately displayed.
In a statement, the homecoming committee said that “we regret omitting those images and we recognized that, by doing so, we unintentionally caused hurt to members of our campus community. We are sorry that our video failed to show the full breadth of the university experience and made members of our community feel excluded.”
University officials also issued a statement regarding the vide that read in part: “We know that, both historically and today, students of color and other under-represented groups do not feel as welcome on our campus as majority students. As a community, we must commit to and invest in ways to change this.”
