Thursday, January 22, 2015
YOUNGSTOWN
Following recent jury verdicts and protests related to police officer-shootings of blacks, the keynote speaker at Youngstown State University’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Breakfast urged attendees to continue Dr. King’s work as a drum major for justice.
“He forced us to confront some difficult choices,” Wilson Okello said at Thursday’s gathering in Kilcawley Center’s Chestnut Room at YSU. In hearing Dr. King speak, people knew that the situation of the oppressed was urgent, he said.
Okello, a 2005 city school graduate who earned his bachelor’s degree in education from YSU, is a student personnel professional at Miami University.
The breakfast was sponsored by YSU’s Office of Student Diversity Programs, and the university’s Student Diversity Council ambassadors, wearing matching shirts, shared something that they love or a message that’s important to them during a portion of the program titled, “All Lives Matter.”
YSU President Jim Tressel said among the things he and others on campus talk about is the importance of a culture of community.
Everybody, regardless of their role, age, interests or ethnicity, plays a part in that community, he said.
Read more about the event in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.