The newly developed Forum for Underrepresented Student Leaders held their first discussion yesterday focusing on a problem some say is hard-hitting to university programs--student apathy.

The event was coordinated by Kwame Floyd, past president of the National Panhellenic Council (NPHC), to provide an open forum for underrepresented student groups to present their concerns to larger organizations like the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), the Association of Residence Hall Students (ARHS), and the Student Programming Association (SPA).

"The University has a commitment to serve all students," Floyd said. "Underrepresented groups can't survive alone. They can't keep working within their own community."

Chris Talley, president of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and the executive vice president of NPHC, said that fewer and fewer students have been attending his group's functions.

"The culture at Penn State is leaning toward social activities," he said. "They aren't interested in doing activities that benefit their community and themselves."

UPUA president Jay Chamberlin said early involvement is an option for solving this problem.

"You need to really over-saturate freshmen with activities and programs," he said. "If they don't get involved as a freshman, they might never get involved."

Dex Tuttle, graduate assistant for the Center for Student Engagement, said "students aren't apathetic" and that they "just have their own way of doing things."

"Students are in their own little worlds. With your iPod and laptop, you can get information in different ways than you have in the past," he said.

Helping to plan a leadership conference for student leaders, Tuttle said he will include topics that are often the subject of apathy, like stress and financial management, as components of his event.

Floyd said getting students interested in diversity-promoting programs has been a problem for many minority groups.

"Let's just say that the Hispanic population is really low," he said. "You hold some program and five people show up. That means that the rest feel like there's nothing for them here. That's not good."

Group collaboration was also discussed as an alternative to excessive advertising.

"I remember Club Creole had our program the same day as [Associated Student Activities'] Touch of Africa," Rythda Destime, president of Club Creole, said. "We put forth 155 percent, but many students went to the other program instead."

Darcy Rameker, SPA adviser and program adviser for the Center for Student Activities and Programming, said that her office is working on a way to hammer out scheduling conflicts.

"We have all the forms. We plan the programs," she said. "Our job is to look and see if two organizations are aware that they are having similar programs. But we can't force collaboration."

Fernando Disla, director of events for SPA, said that SPA will be revamping the web events calendar, to make it more "student friendly," and better point out scheduling conflicts.

The idea of diverse groups posting events on the general activities calendar rather than just the diversity calendar was also a proposed solution.

Tuttle said the forum helped him better understand the views of groups he is not a part of.

"This goes without saying. As a white male, I have no idea what the Hispanic population wants," he said. "This really helped."

Concluding the program, several students mentioned they would like to see similar open student forums in the future.

"It would be nice to have something like this at the start of the academic year," Destime said. "As a first time president, it's a different ball game than I'm used to. We just don't know where to start so that we can be heard."