DOUG HARRISON: STUDENT LEADER'S ROLES CAN BE VERY CONFUSING

Last week, a group students led by Sharone Hopkins paid a visit to the chancellor. You may recall that Mr. Hopkins most recently made headlines after his appointment to the directorship of the highest-funded, and some might say, the most affluent, student organization on campus, the University Program Board. But forget that for a moment; we're going to talk about Sharone Hopkins, president of the Associated Black Collegians, the leading student organization for African-American students on campus. Or maybe it's Sharone Hopkins the student activist.

It's so hard to tell these days.

What's not so hard to tell is that Hopkins knows the power of being black and prominent on a university campus. And with that sense of importance, he flatly told the chancellor that he and his friends were unsatisfied with the transition currently under way to merge three programs into the new Office of Multicultural Relations.

Excuse me?

That's a strange message coming from one of the campus' most influential minority leaders. You'd think he'd want to get together a welcoming committee for the office and its director, Gwen DeLoach-Packnett, rather than criticize one of the most forward-thinking initiatives in recent University history.

Under the chancellor's plan currently being implemented, the Student Support Services Program and the African American Scholars Retention Program, until recently part of the Center for Academic Development, will be merged into the new Office of Multicultural Relations. These services, in conjunction with other complimentary programming and service mechanisms, will combine to offer all students and especially minority students, a support structure that is capable of expanding as the University's population grows in magnitude and diversity.

Until the new University Center is built (three years by some estimations; five or six by more realistic projections), the office will call some space on the first floor of Clark Hall home. In order set up shop there, the staff must first wait for some renovation and relocation of materials currently being stored in the Clark Hall office.

Apparently Hopkins' and his pals felt a little too inconvenienced by this temporary confusion (the space formerly occupied by Student Support Services and African American Scholars Retention has been reassigned for other uses).

After Hopkins and his clan of malcontents visited the chancellor, she said Hopkins had "expressed concerns that the programs would not be able to provide the existing level of services" as part of the new Office of Multicultural Relations.

But rather than exercise a modicum of patience for the hyper slow pace at which any change on this campus is implemented and give the office a chance to prove itself, the good president and his friends reached into their bag of tricks and pulled out a trip to the chancellor's office. Which in isolation is, well, pretty unremarkable. The Office of Multicultural Relations is a done deal and thankfully, no half-witted attempts to derail it will ever ultimately succeed.

What is far more troubling than the message is the messenger.

Mr. Hopkins' activism wouldn't warrant turning a corner if he were not something of a power broker in student politics on this campus. He effectively holds the purse strings of nearly $100,000 of students' money and is directly responsible for both representing the campus and all its diversity through UPB as well as African American students and their specific interests in ABC.

I just hope that when he starts spouting off, he doesn't get confused about which hat he's wearing.

It's so hard to tell these days.