IUPUI is Indiana's premier urban research university. The campus enrolls more than 30,000 students in 21 schools and academic units.
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University College Renamed After Joseph T. Taylor
Speaker Remarks
Dominic Dorsey
On November 2, 2006; a group of students later to be referred to as the Black Student Initiative sought to improve IUPUI and the quality of life for African American students. With a list of efforts and measures that should be taken on their behalf and in democratic actions reminiscent of the demonstrations decades earlier, handed the IUPUI administration a report detailing what black students saw through their eyes. These things included a lack of cultural competency, the absence of a Multicultural Center, the inability to major in African American and Diaspora Studies and the destruction of the Mary Cable building, one of the few buildings on campus to feature the name of a prominent African American from the community. After more demonstrations, more conversation, further challenges, much nationwide attention and a series of news articles written, all eyes were on IUPUI wondering what the students would do if these challenges were not met. Seeing as how today marks the official naming of Joseph T. Taylor Hall,...I guess we'll never know.
As an African American student and recent graduate of the School of Liberal Arts, I am extremely pleased in the naming of this building honoring Joseph T. Taylor’s legacy. This building, with its inclusion of a new Multicultural Center encompasses Taylor's life-long interest in issues of urban life and diversity.
As one of two commissioners charged with assisting school officials in the desegregating of schools, serving as a field investigator while a teaching fellow at Florida A & M, studying "The Negro in America – An American Dilemma." Serving as director of the Black Clergy Leaders, a campus educational community outreach program that provided managerial and organizational assistance and training to local ministers who had not attended seminary; it's easy to surmise that Joseph T. Taylor was an active man, but more so an activist; once again a man after my own heart. So I’m confident that it would warm his; knowing that IUPUI now offers scholarships and soon undergraduate degrees in African American and Diaspora Studies, has frequent rallies organized by students which include the faith based community and in an act of preserving equity not unlike desegregation, the building which bears his name now houses Adaptive Educational Services which offers quality educational assistance and fights for accessibility for Americans with Disabilities here at IUPUI, the often invisible minority.
As a retired professor of Sociology, a systematic study of society, social relationships, social interaction, and culture; I envision a smile drawn across his face knowing organizations such as Black Student Union, Latino Student Association, Native American Student Alliance and Gay and Straight Alliance are all integral components of the Multicultural Center. The academic in him would more than likely be pleased in the efforts of the office for Student Success which focuses on raising the retention rates of African American men and women, as well as Multicultural Outreach which gives children ages elementary through middle school a dream and ambition to obtain a college degree no matter what the obstacle. These efforts speak directly to what Taylor believed in his heart. At the February 2000 Taylor Symposium, Mr. Taylor once said "We are not accustomed to setting aside time for public discussion of some critical issues unless something comes to a crisis, which rarely results in a true resolution. You can think in a crisis, but you don't bring enough information to a social issue in a one-night meeting."
How proud would he be; knowing that a building which bore his name housed such pro-active organizations and offices which fight for social change and tackle issues of a critical nature every day with great success? Another great man, maybe you've heard of him; named Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, "You can put your foot on the back of my neck to keep my face in the mud, but that means you’re not going anywhere either." The Joseph T. Taylor Hall, a building which contains both University College and the IUPUI Multicultural Center, helps those in need get that foot off their neck and with strong leadership and student support, but also helps point the foot that kept them back for so long in the positive direction for the benefit of all students and all mankind.
Chancellor Gerald Bepko once said of Taylor "His legacy of high achievement will be sustained in all the thousands of people whose lives he touched." In saying this, Chancellor Bepko was actually half right. Joseph T. Taylor's memory will always live on in the memory of the countless students, faculty and staff he has touched, and those he has affected inadvertently with his spirit of caring, civic engagement and social change which permeates the Schools here. However, on this date, May 19th, 2007, his mark will now be left on thousands of students who each semester enter through this hall and continue his legacy by graduating and contributing to a city and school he helped found and worked so hard for.
