Currently in its second year, the ICC aims to raise awareness about diversity at Dartmouth. It is composed mostly of student representatives from the campus's minority student groups, including the Pan-Asian Council and the Gay Straight Alliance.
"This is a kind of coming out party," Tommy Lee Woon, Associate Dean of Student Life for the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, said in his introductory speech.
The student-run ICC sprung out of the success that the Office of Pluralism and Leadership had promoting awareness of diversity among faculty members and alumni.
"We wanted the community to know about the ICC," Jeffrey Koh '09, an international student representative to the organization, said.
The ICC hopes to increase integration among students. Its past accomplishments include hosting a thirty-student retreat and conducting a survey on diversity awareness for last year's Student Body Presidential candidates.
As part of its new agenda, the organization plans to increase communication with community groups and top administrators. Woon disclosed plans for the ICC to dine with President Wright to discuss topics on diversity.
"All of this is an effort to create a more integrated community," Woon said.
After Woon's speech, students gave several presentations relaying their personal experiences as diverse members of the Dartmouth community. The audience was asked to consider different types of diversity as speakers addressed topics ranging from hearing impairment to how ADHD affected students' Dartmouth experiences.
Many of the anecdotes featured at the dinner were repeat performances from the Experiences presentation given during freshman orientation.
"The big problem that I found with the dinner was that I'm an '09 and I had already heard most of the stories before at the Experiences talk during Orientation," Jennifer Bandy '09 said. "On the whole, the repeat made it a less valuable experience, and I ended up not getting as much out of it as perhaps some of the upperclassmen might have."
Director of Alumni Relations Nelson Armstrong '71 also spoke to the group about his experiences as a minority at Dartmouth as well as his belief that more change was needed.
"Now it's a place that's much warmer, that is much more inclusive, but we still have a long way to go," Armstrong said.
Some of the students expressed their concern for the makeup of the audience, observing that although many minority students were represented in the audience, other student members were minorities in numbers.
"The people who should be here are not here. This [group of students] does not represent the majority [makeup] of our campus," Spring Yu '09 said.
