Minority students gathered with faculty and graduate students Wednesday to discuss their experiences and hardships at Eastern, and offer suggestions for improvement.

The five minority students, 25 faculty members and four graduate students made up the panel for the third annual minority student panel discussion and brown bag lunch, which took place in the faculty lounge of Buzzard Hall.

Both undergraduate and graduate students shared their thoughts about being a minority and why they chose Eastern.

Ari Tukes, a graduate student in counseling and student development, said he heard about Eastern from a professor at Parkland Community College who is an alumnus of Eastern.

Amna Latif, a graduate student in educational administration and native of Pakistan, said people from home told her she wouldn’t be able to get a job in the United States because of the way she dressed, but she looked at universities anyway and found Eastern.

“I was writing to universities in the states,” Latif said. “Eastern was the only one who responded to me personally.”

Hardships minority students face at Eastern include dealing with stereotypes and having class with people who have not had a lot of experience being around minorities. In 2004, out of 9,928 undergraduate students, only 12.53 percent were minorities, according to Eastern’s Web site.

“I found myself representing all the Black, African-American students; that’s a lot of pressure,” said Quinette Tukes, a graduate student in counseling and student development. “Universality is a positive thing, and I’m learning that.”

The panel also focused on Eastern’s positive points, comparing it to other schools, like Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Demarius Howard, a senior psychology major and native of O’Fallon, said he took a summer school class at SIUE, where he sat in a lecture hall with a large class.

“It didn’t seem like I had a voice,” Howard said.

Leta Chesser, a senior early childhood, elementary and middle-level education major, agrees the small classrooms at Eastern are a benefit.

Chesser described an incident in a class where a woman from a small town refused to sit near her.

“I made it a purpose to sit next to her,” Chesser said, not trying to be mean, but stressing the idea that race should not matter, especially in a classroom. “At Eastern, I like the fact that when I’m in the classroom, everybody knows my name and when I say something, everybody hears it.”

The students also described how their department’s methods of teaching are beneficial to them.

“Being a graduate student, I have really enjoyed the hands-on (learning) that I’ve had with my professors,” Quinette Tukes said. “I need that interaction and I’ve gotten that.”

The panelists expressed concerns that there is a need for more interaction and minority mentors.

“We need to see mentors that we can relate to,” Quinette Tukes said.

This year’s discussion was limited to faculty and graduate students because of the lack of participation by undergraduate students in the past, said Martin Brown, assistant special education professor. The purpose was “to make faculty more aware of how to support minority students in the classroom,” he said.

Robin Elan, a community counseling graduate student, said it was interesting to hear the panelists’ unique experiences.

“I never really thought of things like that,” she said. “More people could definitely learn from this.”