Events stress physical diversity

By Diane Buerger

Many “Unity in Diversity” week activities for today will center around the theme of physical awareness.

The activities include a handicapped simulation, in which campus personalities will experience how life appears to a handicapped individual for one day.

Those taking part in the demonstration include Jon Dalton, NIU vice president for Student Affairs, Student Association President Paula Radtke and SA Treasurer Diana Turowski.

Dalton, who will spend this afternoon in a wheelchair, has been involved in handicapped simulations in the past.

“Last year I was in a blind simulation with a mask … It calls attention to this kind of diversity on our campus.”

Performances today include Joseph Baird, a guitarist who has been paralyzed from the waist down since the age of two.

Baird has been playing the guitar since he was 10 years old. His latest album is titled “Lost and Found,” and he will perform at noon in the Martin Luther King Memorial Commons.

Baird also will speak at the Awareness and Attitudes workshop in the Grant Towers North D-formal lounge at 5:30 p.m.

A sign-sync demonstration is scheduled for 11 a.m., also in the commons.

Sign-sync is the use of sign language to express what is being sung in the music.

A seminar on “Black and White Greeks on Campus” will be sponsored by the SA and its Minority Relations Committee.

Morenike Cheatom, the minority relations adviser, said a questionnaire was sent to all fraternities and sororities and about 100 were returned.

“We will be educating both groups (blacks and whites) about finding a way to work together and establish some kind of communication.”

Cheatom said the main interest represented in the questionnaires was establishing one council for both black and white greeks, discussing hazing and desegregating fraternities and sororities.