Republicans do not recycle, skinny white girls only listen to Taylor Swift and all Asians are pre-Commerce.
Whether these statements made you laugh in agreement or shake your head, you are reacting to a stereotype. If the statements made you want to open people's eyes to the prejudices caused by stereotyping, however, you should participate in De-Stereotype Day today.
Sponsored by Sustained Dialogue, University Programs Council, Arts & Sciences Council and Office of Vice President for Student Affairs, De-Stereotype Day works to break down prejudices and recognize that stereotypes do exist.
University students across Grounds have been picking up free T-shirts from the UPC office for the past week, with the intention each participant will write a stereotype he defies on the back on his shirt. There are 1,500 shirts, and Camille Danvers, public relations officer and a moderator of Sustained Dialogue, is confident that every shirt will be gone by the time of the event.\n"The idea [behind the event] is to not judge people so quickly," Danvers said.
Sustained Dialogue was started in 1999 at Princeton University to improve campus race relations. In 2001, the University became the second college in the country to have a chapter of Sustained Dialogue when two students, Priya Parker and Jacqueline Switzer, were concerned about race relations on Grounds and decided to start up a Sustained Dialogue group. Now, 13 universities and colleges across the country are part of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network.
At the University, the student organization is comprised of dialogue groups of about 12 members each, who meet once a week to discuss relevant issues. Near the end of the year, each of the 10 to 12 groups comes up with a social action project to demonstrate and discuss what they have talked about during the course of the year. Sustained Dialogue came up with the idea for De-Stereotype Day several years ago when a dialogue group decided that stereotyping was a problem at the University.
Through today's event, the group hopes to increase awareness of how prevalent stereotypes actually are and the role they play in students' interactions.
Sustained Dialogue Chair Pemberton Heath said she thinks although many students know the event is scheduled, they are not entirely sure as to its purpose. Hopefully, though, the day will cause participants rethink their tendencies to stereotype, she said.
Heath, who participated last year, said "it was a challenging experience [to have] something written on my back that people didn't know about me."
UPC Current Events Committee Chair Stephanie Nguyen also participated in De-Stereotype Day last year and emphasized the effect it can have on participants.
"It's a simple way to make a big statement on Grounds," Nguyen said.
Nguyen added that the event fits well with UPC's goals because it reaches out to many different "niches" of the University. Last year, her resident advisor obtained shirts for all of her suitemates. On the back of her own shirt, she wrote, "I am Asian but not good at math, and I don't like sushi."
"We decorated them together and had fun labeling each others' stereotypes and realizing that they were so far from those judgments since we knew each other well," she said.
The white shirts are the most visible symbols of Sustained Dialogue, and Public Relations Coordinator Anne Grant hopes people who participate in De-Stereotype Day will want to join Sustained Dialogue.
Grant emphasized how diverse Charlottesville is, both socioeconomically and racially, and believes the University is a prime location for discussion of existing stereotypes.
Sustained Dialogue Vice President Devin Underhill, added that acknowledging stereotypes is different from saying stereotypes are untrue.
"We aren't saying that stereotypes are necessarily bad. Many of them are based upon truth - this is where we get most of our criticism because people think the day is protesting stereotypes, but the focus is actually just on recognizing that they exist," Underhill said.
He added, though, that stereotypes are not necessarily negative, and recognizing this enables one to learn something new about others.
"In my opinion, the event and discussions they provoke are invaluable ... while it may not always lead to friendship, it exposes people to new viewpoints," Underhill said.
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