Let's Talk UNLV

0:00:00
Welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNLV on KUNV. You with co-host Keith and Renee. Renee, how was your weekend?

0:00:15
My weekend was pretty chill, but I did have to do a lot of grading. I teach a class, so on Saturdays I get my breakfast, I get my bacon, my eggs, and my tea, and I just start grading. So the first tip of the day, task of the day for that Saturday morning is grading. So what about you?

0:00:37
That doesn't sound like a fun weekend.

0:00:38
Yes, of course.

0:00:39
Not at all.

0:00:40
I get to see and read the thoughts and point of view and perspective of our brilliant students.

0:00:48
This weekend was more relaxed. It was nice out and a little windy, but my son had a surprise soccer game. That's the theme of this sporting semester is the schedule is always inconsistent and flux and you get a text from the coach saying, oh, we have a game this weekend. So they were able to get an opponent's schedule. So we had a soccer game this weekend. So that was fun to have some sense of normalcy, in particular for the kids. The parents, we had to stay in the car and only the kids could be on the field. I had a decent view. I had a big tree on one goal, so I missed three of the goals that were scored. But overall, the weekend was lax and it gave us something to just get out of the house and do.

0:01:30
That's funny. I can just imagine you on top of the car, rooting. You actually stayed in the car.

0:01:34
I actually stayed in the car. I stayed in the car and you know, but it was actually had a decent enough view so it wasn't too bad. You know, I'm excited. You know, I'm always interested when we do segments where we're really showcasing some of the unique work that the students are doing and the students are leading some of the work that's impacting their their fellow peers experience here on campus. So today is no no difference. So we have our guest, Nauru Benjamin, who's the secretary of the Men of Color Alliance. Nauru, thank you for joining us today.

0:02:04
Yes, thank you. It's a pleasure to be talking to you all.

0:02:06
Could you tell us a little bit about sort of your role at UNLV or your standing at UNLV or how you got connected to the Men of Color Alliance?

0:02:14
Yeah, of course. So, first of all, I'd like to thank both of you for your time today. I'll go ahead and introduce myself. My name is Naur Benjamin. I'm a second year student at UNLV, pursuing a major in philosophy with a concentration in law and justice, while pursuing a minor in global entrepreneurship. As for my stance at UNLV, I'm currently involved with UNLV MOCA, which stands for the Men of Color Alliance at UNLV. I serve on the executive board as their secretary. As for how I got involved, I actually serve as a senator for the College of Liberal Arts with UNLV CSUN. Through that, one of my colleagues in the Senate currently is in the Men of Color Alliance and informed me of the organization and the vacancies that came about in the executive board. He told me about what this organization does, what position I could go up for and what my duties would be. And once that happened, I decided I would go up. This was in about October of 2020. My duties pretty much just entail making up all of the agendas for every meeting, documenting all of the minutes, and working with each officer on the executive board to create initiatives for students in the Meta-Cover Alliance. So pretty much work with the executive board to address issues going on around campus and host events to kind of connect students on and off campus to make friends and build relationships.

0:03:31
Well, thank you. You do quite a bit. So talk to us about how this organization got formed and what are the most, I guess, key initiatives that you're most proud of?

0:03:42
So this organization got formed quite a couple years back. I'm not necessarily familiar about how it got formed entirely, as the original advisors who were part of the organization are no longer around when I came into the executive board. But for the key initiatives, necessarily, what I am currently working on in the Men of Color Alliance is to kind of host a how to be smart with your money workshop. I'm currently, I've been working on that on the executive board with a few of the other offices. It's one of the initiatives I'm proud of as of the moment that we've been able to collaborate with each other on. We're looking to have several panelists to be talking to students about necessarily how to handle their money with financial aid, with their paychecks, how to do that responsibly, make sure they eat healthy, make sure they take care of themselves, and make sure they budget the right way so they have enough money for their personal hygiene and belongings, while they also make sure that they have money for their classes, for their necessary needs and food and things like that. That is one of the main initiatives I am currently working on. As for other things, we are currently working on planning a visual to happen on Transgender Day of Remembrance. This is another initiative I am proud to be working on alongside the other officers. Transgender Day of Remembrance is on November 20th of every year. It's a day that seeks to highlight all of the lives lost due to unfortunate hate crimes. What the Men of Color Alliance is trying to do is put up seats on and other organizations to host a vigil this coming year. Of course, it is relatively early to be still at planning, but it takes a little bit of communication and a lot of logistics. So both of these are the top two initiatives that I've been working on and that I am proud to be working on.

0:05:20
Great.

0:05:21
So I know that in the past when we've been able to travel, there's been a couple of retreats that MOCA has planned. Talk to us about the retreats. What was the focus of the retreats? What were some of the activities that you did on the retreats that were most memorable.

0:05:38
So we did do the retreats in the past and we did do several road trips. We have not done any since I got involved in the organization due to COVID-19, but I am familiar with quite a few of them. So I believe one of the most recent ones they did before the pandemic happened was a retreat where they went hiking to kind of just connect all the members of the organization. All of these retreats and these road trips and these journeys with members of the executive board and members of the organization, but just to connect people from different backgrounds, different races, and things like that, to kind of have them all get to know each other and get familiar with other cultures. They then go ahead and discuss important issues facing society in our city and our state regarding around different cultures, Islamophobia, homophobia, and a bunch of other issues going on around Las Vegas. The main points of these retreats are to kind of have these members connect with one another and really understand what is going on within the community, how we can really address it as an organization. It's been a really good way for some of these members to get to know one another, to connect with one another, and to identify several key issues going on around in our country and community as a whole. So I don't necessarily have any memorable retreats, as we haven't done anything. I've gotten involved due to COVID-19 happening in March 2020, and I got involved in October of 2020. But based off of my knowledge, from my own personal opinion, I'd say, though I did not go on it, it would be the one that I said the most about that I think was a really good one. I know they went hiking and discussed several different issues with one another facing the community, and they were really able to connect with one another and kind of address several different things going on within the community.

0:07:17
That's fantastic. And I know you mentioned two specific initiatives. Could you talk a little bit about how the organization solicits student feedback and how you use that feedback to develop new programming such as the Be Smart With Your Money workshops?

0:07:34
Yeah, that's a wonderful question. Thank you for asking. So a lot of the initiatives we're currently working on, the way we implement these is through the executive board. We used to have weekly meetings. Now we have five weekly meetings with the advisors and their executive officers, where we each can be a part of what we've been hearing on and going on around campus. And we each can be a part of what we would like more to work on. And we each assign tasks to one another and work together to implement these initiatives. As to how we've heard about these issues facing the community and how we could be implementing these initiatives to help the community would solely be through all of our involvement on campus. A lot of our executive officers, resident assistants in the dorm halls and the resident halls, they've heard from several different students, several different issues going on around campus that they feel that MOCA could address. They then bring it into these reports and then a couple of lines of executive meetings talking about what issues they heard and what we can do to kind of help represent them. Aside from that, some of our other executive officers are involved with CSUN, student government, myself included, our vice president, and our public affairs officers. Each of us, through CSUN, hear about a lot of issues going on around campus, and we bring these issues to the Men of Color Alliance at our executive board meetings, doing our reports to really discuss about all of the feedback we post to students. We then as an organization, as an executive board, work together to identify the key issues and what we could do to be identifying initiatives to help these students. So the biggest thing we've been hearing going on all around campus over the past year or so has been students struggling to manage their money responsibly. They're not necessarily sure how much they should be budgeting. They're not necessarily sure how to budget. They are not necessarily sure what they should be focusing on for their bills, for their classes, and things like that. Our high schools don't necessarily teach us about taxes, about money, and about budgeting, and things like that. We've had several students tell us on and off campus about all these issues facing them, which is why, as an executive board, we decided we would go ahead and work together and bring this feedback to our executive board meetings to kind of put together an initiative to address all of these

0:09:40
issues.

0:09:41
So, all of the issues we hear on campus are solely from each of our involvement on campus. We have a pretty good diverse executive board. Each of us are involved in many different ways on campus, so we all put together feedback we hear from different students and we discuss it together in the executive board meetings collectively to identify what we could implement and how.

0:10:00
And then could you speak to, you know, I think you've conducted maybe a few of the StudySmart, I mean the Be Smart With Your Money workshop series. Could you talk a little bit about maybe some of the feedback that the students who have attended has shared with you or the presenter?

0:10:15
So we haven't hosted one yet. Our first one will actually be in about a week and a half, but based off of the feedback I've been hearing from students currently on campus in several of my classes and organizations who are familiar with MOCA and know about this and who are familiar with these issues on campus have just been telling us that they're excited to see an initiative like this, that they haven't seen anything like this happen on campus before, and that they're really looking forward to see how we're going to be discussing. A few of our panelists look like, one would be Elias Benjamin. He is my oldest brother. He's been in the field of business for about a decade now, so he's really familiar with financials and really budgeting and really knows how to teach young students how to be smart with their money. As well as Dr. Janet Runge from the College of Business to discuss the importance of scholarships within your undergraduate career, how they help out with your classes and how you can lead to that with budgeting your money. Other panelists include professors who teach in the College of Business, who specifically teach finance courses. So we're looking forward to hosting this event. Based off of the positive feedback we've heard from students about how they are excited and how they're happy to see these concerns be addressed, we feel like we will have a good turnout to ensure.

0:11:26
So talk to us about how the executive leaders are selected and then your recruitment process to bring more men of color into the fold?

0:11:38
That's a great question. Thank you. So, regarding how our executive board members are recruited, typically we have elections every month in April, every year in April from April 5th to 9th, which is what's stated in our bylaws. So, the way this works is we used to give out information packets about what each position entails as well as that informational meeting talking about what each position does and why it's important, necessarily. So, right now, what we did last time, we had appointed several different executive offices by hosting an election where people in the organization could vote. The way we do it is unique, different from other organizations. I say that because we don't necessarily just have students in the organization vote for these offices. We have students from whatever organization on campus as we identify as a leadership organization seeking to address several different issues on campus. Due to that, we believe every student should have a voice to kind of vote for the candidate in the menopausal line, which is how we typically do it. Our next election will be April 5th. Given that we're doing this one in COVID-19, the way we will be hosting this one will be on the involvement centers, similar to the way CSUN does those. So the involvement center will just let us have a ballot with each candidate, as well as biographies and mission statements, which students can then go ahead and vote. Candidates getting the most votes for each executive position will be elected into the Men of Color Alliance Executive Board and will work closely with the advisors. As to how we recruit students on and off campus, right now we've been doing a lot of community outreach, utilizing social media. We've been using Instagram, we've been using Facebook, we've been using Discord chats, GroupMe chats, and things like that, to kind of reach out to students directly and all of these chats that are going on around campus and recruit them. Given what happened with COVID, a lot of students have created Discord chats for their classes, for their organizations, and that's really how we've been focusing on recruiting students. We also used to recruit students on campus by hosting events, by tabling, and by recruiting students in residence halls and things like that.

0:13:38
So to what extent is MOCA different than some of the other multicultural organizations? I mean, specifically you're focusing on men of color, but beyond that, what makes you unique and distinct from the 380 plus organizations that are already on campus?

0:13:55
That's a wonderful question.

0:13:57
So there are a lot of organizations on campus. I'd say what makes us different is what we specifically focus on. A lot of the organizations on campus focus on specific issues and specific initiatives. A lot of cultural organizations focus on specific cultures and kind of addressing stereotypes and stigmas within those cultures. We have other organizations like the Women of Color Coalition, one of our key partners and they kind of just work with women of color specifically to identify key initiatives. So what makes us different from all these other organizations is that each of them address specific issues going on around specific communities, like the UNLV Muslim Association, UNLV Latinx Association, things like that, focus on those specific communities to address these specific issues in each of these specific fields. What MOCA does is address all of these issues in one broad field in one organization as a whole. But we also, as you mentioned, we specifically focus on men of color to really redefine masculinity and dismantle all of these stereotypes of

0:15:07
men that come up negatively. I'd say what makes us unique is our key goals, as I mentioned, and our key differences from those other organizations. And this is

0:15:23
related to that question. Could you speak a little bit to how MOCA sort of

0:15:17
with them and then also how you work with sort of the university stakeholders

0:15:22
to execute the mission of MOCA. That's a great question, thank you. So what we typically do to answer your question, we have a MOCA Talks podcast. Again, for the rest of MOCA stands for the Men of Color Alliance at UNLV. It's abbreviated as MOCA. The MOCA talks podcast kind of talks to different students at different backgrounds to initiate these conversations about specific issues. We've had the CSUN student body president and the CSUN Senate president be on this podcast to discuss the importance of student government and student leadership. We've had President Whitfield on this podcast as well, which personally I'm not necessarily going to take credit for these, as the people who should be taking credit would be our Public Affairs Officer James Wright, as well as our Vice President and President of the organization. As to how we work with the University to really implement these initiatives would be through our advisors with UNLV Housing. They work closely with us and they work closely with the President and Vice President and Public Affairs Officers to really initiate these projects on campus and to really see if they are feasible and they give us a feedback as to what we can and cannot do and help maintain our budget in a smart and fiscally responsible way.

0:16:32
So you talked about the podcast and specifically Dr. Whitfield being a part of that podcast as an invitation was extended to him and you also talk about part of the mission of MOCA is to redefine masculinity and to reduce or eliminate negative stigmas or stereotypes that are affiliated with men. How does the podcast achieve those goals? And perhaps maybe talk about how the speakers have really put their spin on how MOCA can do this work. That's a great

0:17:04
question. Thank you so much for asking that. So necessarily how we address these issues and like redefine masculinity and dismantle these stereotypes is really connecting with the people on the podcast and then open conversation discussing each of our experiences within the community, discussing what we've heard from students within the community and what we can necessarily do and why these issues are important, why it's important to Mentally Stereotyped and what they are. We've had a lot of amazing speakers. Most recently, we had President Whitfield as one of the speakers being a host way of host, Wei, our president, Darian, I believe, from the Women of Color Coalition, Abraham Lugo, our vice president, and Ava from the Women of Color Coalition. So, the speakers work with the guests on the podcast to engage in an open conversation discussing key issues facing the community and how we can necessarily address it. The way we really initiate these conversations to, as you mentioned, dismantle these stereotypes and redefine masculinity is really just by making sure that these podcasts are an open and comfortable environment for students and guest speakers to show them that they can discuss these openly in an open conversation. All can have several different

0:18:13
backgrounds and opinions to address. And when does the podcast air and how can our listeners tap into the podcast that you record? So the podcast, what we had

0:18:24
last time, we had it I believe live on YouTube and we had it live on Twitch. I don't necessarily have the specific timeline as to how often it airs. It really airs whenever we decide we have specific speakers ready for the podcast and when we want to be having deep conversations. For example, the podcast with President Woodfield, the President, Vice President, and Public Affairs Officer worked on, took a little bit of time and logistics and planning with one another to figure out when we want to host it. As to how we get students to show up, we market this podcast on social media on our Men of Color Alliance Instagram page, and we work with other organizations to market this as well, such as the CSUN and the Women of Color Coalition, abbreviated as UMLB WOKE. So these podcasts, I don't necessarily have the timeline of how often they air, but they air whenever the executive board has specific speakers and specific issues of what will be going on.

0:19:20
You know, during this important work, I'm sure you faced some obstacles and challenges. Could you speak to some of the greatest challenges that MOCA faces trying to execute its mission and identified initiatives?

0:19:34
So, I'd say the biggest challenge of taking us through really the community outreach and community involvement. This has been an ongoing conversation in all of our executive board's meetings quite recently, actually. We just discussed it a couple days ago this past weekend. The issue that the main obstacle that this organization has faced was when COVID hit. MOCA, the American Civil Rights, was typically an on-campus organization hosting events on campus, doing things on campus, doing retreats and traveling on and off campus with students. In the remote interface, it's been difficult for us to recruit students and really create initiatives to recruit them. It's been difficult trying to get students who don't live in residence halls and who live off campus and commute to campus. A lot of our executive board members are resident assistants and they work in the residence halls and communicate with the students about these issues. So the key obstacle that MOCA faces would simply be community involvement and community outreach, especially during COVID-19. It's really difficult to be getting students to join the organization, to show up to a meeting, and to really visit their social media. I personally feel like a lot of organizations have been facing this since COVID hit, but personally, since I came in the organization in October of 2020, it's been a key obstacle that we have consistently faced with. It's a key obstacle we've been struggling with. That's simply been recruiting students during this remote interface and figuring out what to host, how to host it, how we're going to get students to have an incentive to come and things like that.

0:21:03
So given that there's optimism in the air regarding what fall may look like, what is MOCA planning in the hopeful, normal return to campus, if that is in order?

0:21:15
So given the hopeful return to campus, fingers crossed that does happen, we've had a few discussions. We haven't necessarily made up our mind on any initiative, given we don't know what will happen with COVID-19 and all of the strains going around. But if we are on campus in the fall, we are looking to have our meetings to be back in person so we can communicate with students, possibly table on campus to be recruiting students who are going in and out of classes, and possibly one discussion item that came up at our last executive board meeting was to have a road trip in the fall. Typically, this is every spring, but given that right now we're in a situation with COVID where we can't necessarily be doing things like that and need social distance, we cannot host that. Given the hopeful return to campus later in the fall of this year. If everything is going well and we can be back on campus, we're looking to have a road trip and plan that out either for Las Vegas or for California. But nothing is set in stone yet as we don't necessarily know what will be happening with the campus regulations and the COVID-19 regulations and governance is a lot.

0:22:21
And then another follow-up question is, if you had a magic wand and you could get whatever you needed for MOCA, what would you ask for?

0:22:30
That's a wonderful question. So, just to ensure that I'm ready, you're asking if I could ask for one thing that MOCA could get.

0:22:37
One thing or multiple things that you could ask for and get to further MOCA's mission and vision.

0:22:45
To be honest, that would be more students entirely in the organization, especially students who do not live on campus and live off campus. It's easy to be recruiting students on campus thanks to a lot of our executive board members being resident assistants. But if there was one thing I could ask for and have MOCA get to further this organization, to further our growth and our involvement on campus, it would simply be getting more students to be involved within the organization. Because if that would happen, we could grow the organization as a whole, connect more students, and lead to a better future for the Men of Color Alliance.

0:23:24
Is there anything that we didn't ask you that you would like to share

0:23:28
about the organization? Not necessarily. The only thing that I would like to share is that if any students listen to this, the Men of Color Alliance will be having our executive elections April 5th. I would just like to encourage all students to check out the organization and get involved with these elections as the entire executive board will be going up for a vote to recruit a new president, vice president, secretary, and other positions as well.

0:23:52
All right, thank you for all the wonderful information. And, you know, Renee, I'm just always taken aback with just all the things that our students are doing nowadays and comparing it sort of with what I was doing as a student or not doing as a student. And it's just so, so impressive. And, you know, one of my takeaways just hearing about MoCA is just how comprehensive they are in terms of the approach for student informed and student led initiatives, in particular, like that Be Smart with Your Money workshop series, and then how they leverage faculty and community experts to serve as presenters, as well as how thoughtful MOCA is in terms of working and partnering with various UNLV stakeholders to execute their initiatives

0:24:39
that are high priority to students.

0:24:42
And I take away that MOCA really underscores the value of community involvement and how an organization can really thrive or at least feel like they're not reaching its highest potential when community involvement is not there. And so kudos to MOCA for continuing the work in spite of COVID and planning ahead for a road trip as well as other ways to engage each other. But I really think that this organization is so different because they have the mantle of trying to redefine masculinity, which can be very toxic, as well as to dismantle the stigmas, which is really unusual for a RSO, or just an organization, to take on. And so I'm so glad that UNLV is able to have a group of men who are tackling that problem and doing it again in the midst of COVID, which we know men of color, communities of color have been just devastated by this virus. But again, it has not deterred their work.

0:25:50
And thank you again, Nauru, for joining us.

0:25:52
Yeah, thank you for your time. I really appreciate all of it.

0:25:56
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. For my co-host Keith, I'm Renee. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12 on KUNV Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12 on KUNV 91.5 Jazz in May. That's a wrap.

Transcribed with Cockatoo