TEDxUF led an event that addressed discrimination against minorities in higher education Thursday night.
About 30 students met in Stuzin Hall to watch the TEDx video “How we’re priming some kids for college — and others for prison” by sociologist Alice Goffman. They later spoke about how it related to them.
“This is a pop-up event leading up to TEDxUF,” said Mina Robinson, a 20-year-old UF advertising sophomore and a TEDxUF event coordinator. “This is like a teaser, kind of.”
TEDxUF and Teach for America partnered for their second event this academic year. Chanel Cochran-Moore, a recruitment manager for Teach for America, met Robinson last fall at a Teach for America event.
“I would love to continue these conversations once a semester, at least,” Cochran-Moore said. “If you can bring these talks to college campuses, you can bring effective change.”
Laura Uribe, a UF political science freshman, said she learned from the other students in the classroom about the opportunity gap minorities face.
“This opened my eyes to other perspectives,” the 18-year-old said.
Uribe, a first-generation college student, said she has had more opportunities living in the U.S. than her parents did abroad.
“I have so many more opportunities than my parents had in Colombia,” she said. “My parents pushed me even though they never experienced college.”
William Johnson, a UF mechanical engineering senior, said his parents expected him to go to college.
“My parents went to college,” the 23-year-old said. “I grew up knowing I was going to college. It was just an expectation.”
Cochran-Moore said she noticed discrimination in classrooms as a high-school teacher in Atlanta. She taught as part of the Teach for America program from 2013 to 2015.
“So many things could be changed if education was a little more equal amongst everybody,” she said. “Through these conversations you get to see how important education is.”
Contact Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @MerylKornfield.
