There are 1,703 American ethnic minority, 440 registered disabled, 2,516 international and 5,423 nontraditional students on this campus. These are the people who bring diversity to this school. These are the people who bring different points of view by their different cultural or life experiences. These are the people who want to feel like they are home when walking on campus. What happens when you take their voices away? Well, first of all, if you can’t listen to them, you can’t learn from them. Also, if you can’t listen to them, you can’t make them feel like they are home.It is being argued that the college senators or living area senators on GSB can serve these groups as well as the speciality seat senators. This, for me, is impossible. You can’t serve the international students without knowing what they go through when coming into a whole new world from a totally different culture. You can’t serve a disabled student if you don’t know what they go through and what kinds of services they need. Specialty seats try to serve the needs of about 10,000 students. These are the students who need their voices to be heard. These are the students who are interested in their voices being heard. And these are the students who will speak louder if their voices aren’t heard. Kivanc Kahya

GSB international senator

Junior

Engineering