New UMC chairman discusses on-campus multi-culturalism

College sophomore Christopher Cruz-Guzman was elected the new United Minorities Council chairman yesterday. In an interview with The Daily Pennsylvanian, Cruz-Guzman expressed his plans to continue promoting unity, diversity and awareness on campus next semester.

Daily Pennsylvanian: What are your goals for the coming year? Chris Cruz-Guzman: Going along with the agenda that the UMC already has and just making those things happen, in terms of, again, pushing for admissions of a more diverse faculty, improving the presence of the UMC and improving the unity within the UMC board and all of its constituent groups.

DP: What made you decide to run for chairman?

CCG: It was really the mission that the UMC had …which is about multiculturalism, and about interculturalism and those are things that I really stand for and really believe. And I think I was the best person for the job so that really made me go for it … it’s my passion to work with different groups of different cultures.

DP: What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to tackle them?

CCG: That’s a tough question, because, you know, so far it seems like we have an awesome executive board, so I don’t see any challenges that are going to come up, except the ones that are unforeseen or the unexpected challenges. With the executive board we have now, I think we’re going to do an awesome job coming up with solutions.

DP: What would you like to see the UMC do differently?

CCG: Have more unity and cohesiveness within all the constituent groups ­— because we’re such a huge organization, it’s difficult at times for everyone to get to know each other, and for all the cultures to interact. So really more interculturalism between different groups that haven’t met or haven’t interacted yet.

DP: The UMC is made up of 25 constituent groups. How do you plan on effectively promoting and preserving unity?

CCG: There’s still a whole bunch of interest on campus for more groups to join, so we’ll definitely be growing. The two biggest events that we do every year, I think, you know, get everyone together around one sole purpose of interculturalism, and those are Unity Week and Celebration of Cultures … it’s really a time when everyone comes together and works together on sending a message across campus on how diverse Penn really is … we’re the number-one school in diversity in the nation which is really big, and you know, sending that message is something where we all come together on and I think that’s really where we become really unified.

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