Erin James said she easily gathered more than enough funds for the second annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Art and Essay Contest this year.
“I”ve never had such an easy time getting funding for something, which is so great,” said James, chair of the University of Idaho”s Ubuntu Committee.
But the problem wasn”t low funds, James said. It was a lack of submissions.
The Ubuntu Committee reviews policies and programs that have to do with diversity on campus, and part of their job is to promote diversity as well. To do so, in 2015 former Chair Jeff Dodge and former Chief Diversity Officer Carmen Suarez started the MLK Art and Essay Contest as one of the groups primary annual projects, James said.
UI graduate and undergraduate students can send in an essay or artistic piece that follows a prompt about equality and social or racial justice. This year”s students were tasked with taking inspiration from the MLK Day keynote speaker Alicia Garza to create a piece of writing or art that imagines a way for UI to be a more caring and diverse community.
The winning student in the category of undergraduate art, graduate art, undergraduate essay and graduate essay each won $500, and honorable mentions in each category received $100. Though James said they happily gave money to the winners, there were so few submissions that they actually had money left over.
James said the Ubuntu Committee received six undergraduate essays, three graduate essays, 14 pieces of undergraduate art and only one piece of graduate art.
“We didn”t have one student from English submit any work, even though they had written essays for their classes and there was $500 on the line,” she said.
James asked Faculty Senate for help promoting the contest next year and discussed ideas at the meeting on how to better advertise the competition.
Faculty Sen. Stephan Flores of the College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) said he was surprised the project did so well with funding when he saw what groups donated money to it. For this year”s contest, the Ubuntu Committee received funds from ASUI, the College of Law, College of Graduate Studies, CLASS, the Office of Diversity and Human Rights, Graduate and Professional Student Association and the International Programs Office.
Flores said he was surprised that the College of Art and Architecture hadn”t donated to the project, considering the art component.
“I realize, saying that, that colleges contribute to diverse populations of students in all kinds of ways,” Flores said.
James said the donors reflect the history of the contest – CLASS didn”t donate to the contest until this year, perhaps because James is from CLASS. James said next year they would contact the College of Art and Architecture as a potential donor, but she said she isn”t as worried about getting enough money as she is about getting more students involved.
Faculty Sen. Yun Chung of the College of Business and Economics said the contest may apply to more students if they offer more types of categories outside of the liberal arts. James said in future years the contest may benefit from having broader prompts and more categories.
Erin Bamer can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ErinBamer