by Sue Britt and Josh Renaud
staff editors

The second annual Campus Week of Dialogue has been put on hold by Steven Wolfe, vice president of the Student Government Association.

The program was to include town hall and community partnership meetings to discuss racial and ethnic diversity issues as part of a larger national campaign. Similar events were held at more than 600 universities last year, and this was to be UM-St. Louis' first year of participation.

The SGA originally planned to host these events during the week of Oct. 4-8, but Wolfe announced Friday that the events were being postponed indefinitely.

"We want to do this right, not just throw it together," Wolfe said.

Wolfe said that there were problems that needed to be resolved before proceeding with the events, but he declined to explain what those problems were.

"It's an internal matter," he said.

LaKricia Johnson, executive secretary of the SGA, organized the Campus Week of Dialogue, which was scheduled to begin with a town hall meeting.

"The reason why it's a campus town hall meeting is because we wanted to talk about the problems that are on the campus with the faculty and the students," Johnson said, "to make each other aware of different things that are going on, because one student might feel that they are being discriminated against, and it may not be that way. It just needs to be talked about. Or maybe it can be that way and professors or other faculty are not even aware of the things that are going on at this school."

The Campus Week of Dialogue was inspired by President Clinton's announcement of the President's Initiative on Race during a speech at the University of California at San Diego in June, 1997.

Richard Riley, secretary of education, and Robert Johnson, assistant to the president and director of the President's Initiative on Race, wrote in a letter sent to universities around the nation that President Clinton's initiative was an effort to build "One America in the 21st century--a nation of people who respect their diversity and embrace the values which unite them."