ORANGE : Students Step Up Cultural Awareness

To the several hundred students who gathered around the courtyard at Chapman University’s Argyros Forum on Tuesday afternoon, the spirited lunchtime exhibition was a step in the right direction.

Actually, it was a whole lot of steps.

In one of the first campus performances of its kind, sisters from the Delta Sigma Theta sorority hopped, stomped and danced in unison, demonstrating an art form known as stepping. The intricate dance, with origins in African tribal dance, is popular primarily with African American college students in fraternities and sororities across the nation.

Tuesday’s stepping program kicks off a monthlong observance of Black History Month at the local university.

“A lot of students here are from diverse cultures,” said Kendra Jones, a university student activities coordinator. “We want to show them this is one aspect of black culture.”

Chapman, where about 4% of its 2,500 undergraduates are African American, has no black fraternities or sororities. The four sisters who performed Tuesday are from a Delta Sigma Theta chapter based at Cal State Fullerton.

Cassandra Smith, 22, who is in the sorority but attends Chapman University, said she hopes the step exhibition will help encourage the creation of a black Greek organization on campus. Smith, a senior chemistry and biology major, said the sorority sisters practiced the five-minute dance routine she choreographed for about 10 days before Tuesday’s performance.

“It’s fun,” said Smith. “It enhances our camaraderie and for students of different ethnic groups, it informs them about black sororities.”

For many of the students enjoying the show Tuesday afternoon, the step performance was definitely something new.

“I’d never seen anything like that before,” said Adam Riffe, 20, a junior accounting major. “It was cool.”

Maggie Varghese, a freshman majoring in political science, agreed.

Programs like this “teach us to be more accepting, which is good since that’s what it’s going to be like in the real world,” said the 18-year-old, who is in Chapman’s Alpha Phi sorority.

Celebrating Black History Month at Chapman is part of a larger university effort to strengthen campus ties among students of different racial and ethnic groups, say campus administrators. Similar programs celebrating the contributions of Asians, Latinos and women are planned later this year.