Taking a moment to rest from organizing his office, Steve Morozumi, the new programs adviser of the Multicultural Center, enjoys his Mountain Dew, “the breakfast of champions.”
Steve Morozumi, the man chosen to fill the director of the Multicultural Center position, which opened when Erica Fuller resigned last year, said he will act only as an advocate for students, not as a director.
On Monday, Morozumi began his term in the position now known as the MCC Programs Adviser.
Before hiring him last spring, students on the MCC hiring committee revamped the position and changed the job title, said Dominique Beaumonté, the MCC’s public relations coordinator last year.
Beaumonté said committee members looked for someone who would advocate student views without voicing personal opinions. They wanted someone who could provide a “support system” for students, he said.
While Fuller was the director, Beaumonté said, she acted mostly as an administrator — someone who gave orders rather than taking direction from students.
One of the reasons committee members chose Morozumi was his experience working as a student advocate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Beaumonté said.
The position “is going to an even higher level this year having Steve here,” he said.
In addition to the 10 years he spent as a college programs adviser at UC Santa Cruz, Morozumi said he has been involved with many social movements over the years. Before moving to Eugene last year, he volunteered with the Rainbow Coalition, a political activist group.
His interest in civil rights issues formed early in his life, Morozumi said. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, he was influenced by the emerging women’s and gay and lesbian rights movements of the time, he said.
And, on a more personal level, he said, he learned about racism and discrimination early on in his life. During World War II, his father and grandfather were forced into American relocation camps because they were Japanese-Americans.
As a child, they told him stories of what it was like living under gun towers and behind barbed-wire fences in the camps, he said. Ironically, his grandfather, a lawyer, taught others in the camps about the Bill of Rights.
Now, Morozumi plans to use his own experience dealing with issues of discrimination and diversity to provide support for University students.
In the short time he has lived in Eugene, Morozumi has taken an active interest in the University. Over the past year, he said, he has attended student union culture nights, athletic events, lectures and other campus events.
As the programs adviser, Morozumi said he sees his role as being “a collaborative relationship rather than a director-staff relationship.” The issues that students decide are the most important to focus on are the ones he will concentrate on as well, he said.
“I don’t have a blueprint for this year’s programs,” he said.
He said he is encouraged by the University administration’s recent efforts to improve diversity on campus, including an outside review of various departments being conducted this week.
Now is a critical time for the University to mandate that departments adopt pro-advocacy agendas to attract students and faculty members of color, he added.
“We’re kind of at a dramatic turning point on campus,” he said.
Despite efforts to improve diversity on campus, he said, there is still work to be done. While students and faculty may want a more tolerant and accepting University, issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation are often ignored because people are not comfortable discussing them, he said.
The MCC can improve diversity on campus by creating a “safe space” for students to discuss these issues, Morozumi said. Another way the MCC can spark dialogue on these issues is by sponsoring guest speakers and collaborating with other academic units to improve diversity in those departments, he said.
As the MCC adviser, he added, one of his responsibilities will be to discover what resources are available to students so that he can refer them to those resources when they need assistance.
“The overall goal is … how to empower as many students as possible,” he said. Students “don’t want to be led. They just really want to be advised and supported.”
ThuVan Hoang, the marketing director for the ASUO, said she is looking forward to working with Morozumi in the coming year.
“I know through our meetings that he seems like the type of person who is really motivated and prepared to take on whatever comes his way,” she said.