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The Brown and Black forum prepared students to present minority issues to political leaders this past weekend. However, due to a miscommunication between parties, the event failed to take place.

Professor Jennifer Ulie-Wells presented the idea to students and staff at the first black and brown forum which occurred on Sept. 24.

“Throughout the planning of it, there was a miscommunication in that team regarding who was marketing what,” Wells said.

Wells said that the situation isn’t seen as a dead end but the beginning of something else.

As the advisor, Ulie-Wells said that she would not let the student’s work go unnoticed. They have plans for an event with a larger audience, on Grand View’s campus during the next school semester.

“We look at it more as it not falling apart, just needing to be re-evaluated,” Wells said.

Between now and then, students still benefit for the idea of the forum. Students like Giselle Sancen Valero, plan to meet with President Henning on Monday, in order to share their research and concerns.

“We want to talk to him about being a person of color on campus and our feelings toward our environment,” Sancen Valero said.

Wells said that there were goals going into this forum, but not all of them were intentional. Not only did the students find their voice ,but they also formed a community with each other.

“The young people blew us away,” Wells said.

The Black and Brown forum was made up of students in the Des Moines Public Schools as well as college students. This allowed the students to learn from each other’s diverse perspectives.

Carlos Rodriguez, A Freshman education and English major, researched the topic of stereotypes in the classroom as well as the psychological effects it creates in minority students.

Rodriguez said that doing the research helped him to realize how different the U.S. is when it comes to accepting differences in comparison to his home in Puerto Rico .

“In Puerto Rico we celebrate differences, more than people do here,” Rodriguez said.

The whole idea of the Black and Brown forum was for students to embrace their differences and educate others on issues that minority groups face.

“The more people know, the more likely things will change,” Rodriguez said.

David Calderon, a freshman secondary education major said that what he saw was the effect that the projects had on the middle school children. The younger students learned how to research and find articles for academic writing.

“If anyone got anything from this, it would be the kids,” Calderon said.