Reducing Prejudice

By Jennifer Palmberg
The Collegian

The National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), a Fresno State campus affiliate, will be presenting Welcoming Diversity: A Prejudice Reduction Workshop, on Saturday, Sept. 10 and Saturday, Nov. 12 in rooms 312-314 of the University Student Union.

The NCBI is an organization that promotes respect, appreciation and equal treatment of all people, Deborah Napoleon, graduate assistant at the Women’s Resource Center said.

Napoleon said President John Welty sent a group of five school representatives to Washington D.C. to train with the NCBI after the Sept. 11 attacks. While there, the representatives learned what was needed to teach the diversity production workshop. The group returned once and trained 18 facilitators of the workshop and returned a second time to teach about 30 more, Napoleon said.

The goal of the workshop is to teach people tolerance, instruct them on how to deal with racial jokes and slurs, and how to develop skills on how to appreciate each others cultures.

The workshop is scheduled to run from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. It was designed to be fully interactive with the participants and act as a “stepping`stone process” that starts with basic differences such as origin and religion and builds from there, Napoleon said.

The event is free to all Fresno State faculty, staff and students and is $75 for non-Fresno State participants.

“We hope to have a campus more tolerant of the different cultures found in the Valley,” Napoleon said. “We hope this workshop will teach students and community members to support each other.”