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Project 60/50 completes its year goal, shows no signs of stopping

The project, run by the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, created forums to discuss issues experienced by East Lansing community members

January 15, 2015
<p>Cast members (from left to right) Christi Thibodeau, Yifan Luo, and Taylor Blair all perform a skit during Rob Roznowski's 60/50 Theater Project on Sept. 19, 2014, at the Fairchild Theatre. Raymond Williams/The State News</p>

Cast members (from left to right) Christi Thibodeau, Yifan Luo, and Taylor Blair all perform a skit during Rob Roznowski's 60/50 Theater Project on Sept. 19, 2014, at the Fairchild Theatre. Raymond Williams/The State News

Photo by Raymond Williams | The State News

Last year Martin Luther King Jr. Day marked the beginning of a massive inclusivity campaign at MSU, coinciding with these two major civil rights anniversaries. Project 60/50 was headed by the MSU Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, or I3, and involved partnership with both student groups and East Lansing community organizations.

Monday marks one year since the project’s kickoff. Though the 60th and 50th anniversaries in the project’s title have passed, project organizers have no plans to end the events associated with Project 60/50 in the near future.

Planning for the project began two years before its kickoff, and its central goal was to create an environment on campus and in the surrounding community where difficult issues could be discussed.

An exploration

I3 Director Paulette Granberry Russell, the executive director of Project 60/50, said the topics for discussion include far more than just civil rights, but could include topics such as the environment, same-sex marriage, elder rights and beyond.

“It’s exploration,” she said. “It’s not necessarily advocacy for civil rights. It’s creating space for individuals who are interested in discussing, for example, issues of race equality.”

The events associated with the project are significantly varied, with the website accepting donations to help set up and maintain events. Money raised went to a number of activities including work with local high school students or setting up an exhibit in the Union.

One major partner of the project included the East Lansing Public Library, where the most popular activity involved regular film showings.

“We’ve done a variety of programs, but one of the ongoing and most popular program is a series of films we did called ‘Racial Healing: A Community Conversation,’” said East Lansing Public Library’s Head of Program and Outreach Services Jill Abood. “The program is we show a film and then we have facilitators who have been for the most part affiliated with MSU, professors, but we’ve also had other people, community members and so forth as well who then lead discussions about issues of race, class, prison system after we watch the film.”

Attendees have included participants from all over the East Lansing area, from MSU students and faculty to local high schoolers. More than 200 events under the Project 60/50 umbrella have been attended by thousands of community members.

Many students during the fall semester felt the need to take this discussion under their own direction, sponsoring and organizing protests and events outside the scope of Project 60/50.

Some of the more noteworthy protests include the “Black Lives Matter” protests in the Main Library during exam week, the massive student uprising against commencement speaker George Will and the banners hung around campus calling attention to the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri.

Attempts to bring students together

Granberry Russell said the issues focused on by the project are ones students still face on campus and in the nation as a whole.

“Issues of race and racial inequality are societal issues and concerns,” she said. “MSU is a microcosm of the greater society.”

Naif Alyami, director of public relations for the International Students Association, believes it’s good for the administration to take steps to fix problems of this nature faced on campus.

“As international students, we feel that we have a gap between us and the domestic students,” Alyami said.

He added that domestic students rarely go out of their way to engage international students on campus, forcing them to bridge the gap even though they’re typically the ones outside their comfort zones.

Alyami also said the situation hasn’t necessarily gotten better for minority student groups, but it’s positive the administration is trying to be involved.

He did point out that events organized by the International Students Association are rarely attended by domestic students, a topic that regularly comes up in discussions.

No end in sight

Though beginning as “a yearlong conversation on civil and human rights,” Granberry Russell said, its organizers have no plans to officially wrap up the project because of the overwhelmingly strong response they have gotten from MSU students, faculty and community members.

Another important civil rights milestone, the 1965 march on Selma, celebrates its anniversary in 2015, meaning the program could include it in potential events.

“Project 60/50 is sustainable and so I don’t see Project 60/50 ending in January of 2015,” Granberry Russel said.

She said discussions are underway to determine the next step for the project.

The East Lansing Public Library plans on continuing its cooperation with I3, as the topics being discussed can be difficult to bring out into the open.

“Those can be uncomfortable conversations,” Abood said. “But (the project is) trying to create an atmosphere where it’s open and people can really communicate and learn and share with one another.”

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