Education and inclusivity were key themes at the press conference held with documentary filmmaker Rita Coburn and Oswego State assistant professor Francisco Suarez at 5:30 p.m. on April 17.

Coburn’s most recent documentary, “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise,” was the result of a long career spent working with Angelou for Oprah Radio. The film was shown to Oswego State students at 6 p.m. on March 27 and discussed as part of Tuesday’s “Voices of Diversity” speaker series on campus.

At the press conference, Coburn said the numerous perspectives that each person provides requires acceptance to make progress.

“We have to be diverse because we have so many points of view,” Coburn said. “Until we have many of those points of view out in the media and out in the communications world, we have a skewed picture of who we are as a people.”

Francisco works in the Department of Communication Studies at Oswego State and organized the main event for the evening. He echoed Coburn’s message and said the current climate has become divisive in an unproductive way.

“We live in a world, in moments, that are very difficult for everybody, where we don’t seem to have the willingness to really listen to each other,” Suarez said.“When we lose that willingness, we are in trouble.”

Education is the solution to this issue, Coburn said, and Angelou is emblematic of this concept.

“Maya Angelou never attended college,” Coburn said. “She was largely self-taught, but she so believed in education, and I too feel that education gets us past the squalls of life.”

Coburn said what inspired her to tell Angelou’s story, and others like it, through her work in radio and film was the desire to bring minorities into media.

“One of the things that really was curious to me was that I looked at my parents and I looked at the books that I had…and I didn’t see me in them,” Coburn said. “Everybody needs to be able to see themselves in a book or some form of story.”

Suarez said this harkens back to celebrating what makes people unique in society and working to make everyone feel welcome.

“The word is ‘inclusivity’ because we are all diverse,” Suarez said. “We are all different. It’s not about diversity; it’s about how I accept who you are even with the difference that you have.”

College is the place where students can spend time with individuals from multiple cultures and learn how to respect one another’s differences, Coburn said.

“College is a wonderful opportunity to open yourself up to learning about other people,” Coburn said. “It is probably one of the first times in life that you leave a community that you were in and realize that everybody doesn’t live like you.”

Coburn said since people cannot change their race or culture, it is crucial to focus on how people can see past and accept their differences.

“We can’t change the colors of our skin,” Coburn said. “We can’t blame white people for being white or black people for being black. We need to come to a humanity of acceptance and working together.”

The way that sort of inclusivity can be achieved, Coburn said, is by each person choosing to change their behavior to promote acceptance in steps.

“What is going to have to change in all of our communications level is people are going to have to decide that they want to be fair,” Coburn said. “As more of us communicate…we start to see each other, and we start to respect each other…It’s actually going to be one person at a time.”

“Voices of Diversity” was the result of intercultural student teams that created artwork, fashion and documentaries based on the stories of international students at Oswego State, all put on display at the event.

Maria Pericozzi | The Oswegonian