Jerome Rodgers, senior associate athletic director, sat in a circle at a group discussion Wednesday night and expressed his opinion that ignorance still exists, and not just when it comes to skin color.

A group of about 12 faculty and students sat with a mediator to discuss how they feel about the events happening in Ferguson. On Aug. 9, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, leading to protests. Wilson awaits a grand jury decision on whether to indict him.

The event was held to give community members a chance to talk about what’s happening in Ferguson without being interrupted or judged, said University Marketing Director Brad Hoey.

Rodgers said he attended to learn more about the student community since he was hired four months ago.

“I do believe that we have to learn from the experiences of the past … but the reality is that there is still ignorance, lack of education. And ignorance stems from that lack of education and lack of access to people that are different; and different isn’t just color. It’s size, shapes, social and economical backgrounds … ,” Rodgers said.

Hoey, who coordinated the event, said the discussion on Ferguson brought forward emotions from people across the United States.

“… It shows the divisions that might exist in our own community and how those divisions can bring us together,” Hoey said. “There sometimes isn’t a large forum where you can talk about these topics, and the group got together because of recent events and to talk about what’s happening on our campus and how can we bring more unity, find out what people are going through and how to communicate better to make our campus more welcoming and embracing.”

Graduate sociology student Stephanie Jones, who is writing her thesis paper on the Ferguson protests, said she attended because she wanted to gain ideas on how DeKalb is responding to what is happening in Ferguson.

“I think DeKalb being such a segregated community and a small world community, it has its fair amount of racial tensions, which is to be expected given the history of DeKalb, but here at NIU this type of issue happens in higher education,” Jones said.

Jones said she thinks one of the issues with race is universities never had to take care of race relations and the race problems NIU has are the same as at most colleges.

“I understand that for some people racism is not a part of their culture because they either will never experience that or just aren’t paying attention to these instances, and [they] just put these situation issues into pockets with [the] Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin situations because they believe it won’t happen in their community,” Jones said.

Hoey said the group could possibly meet again when the grand jury decides whether to indict Wilson in the coming weeks.

“This is the first small step of the journey, and I believe that this journey will be continued for a long time,” Hoey said.