Media Credit: lauren pond/the daily northwestern Liza Moody, a Communication senior who is multiracial, works on a campus comedy show. [Click to enlarge]

Northwestern has cultural groups for almost everyone, from the Chinese Students Association to the Polish American Students Alliance. But no formal organization exists for students who are multiracial. NU's Web site lists about 1.8 percent of current freshmen as "multiracial."

There are at least six informal groups of multiracial students on Facebook.com, including "Ethnically Ambiguous Kids Clique," "Mixed Kid Club!" and "Let's Make Some Mutt Babies (and Be Anti PC)."

Communication senior Liza Moody, who is half black and half white, started "Mixed Kid Club!" with her biracial friend Alley Pezanoski-Browne.

"We kind of made it as a joke," she said. "I was surprised at how many people joined."

Moody said her ethnicity was not an issue until she came to college.

"For the first time, I was like, 'Wow, I don't fit in,'" she said of her acting experience with the African American Theatre Ensemble's "Out Da Box" comedy show. She said she didn't look white or black enough to be cast in many of the "stereotypical" roles, such as the "nerdy, uncool white kid" and the "typical 'ghetto' black kid."

She said she felt excluded when she first entered NU but has since found that the issue of exclusion is about cliques more than race. Moody said she wasn't sure if she would join a university club for mixed-race students.

"I'm not biracial," she said. "I'm just me."

Ben Kwan, Medill '05, created the Asian Hapa Club for "hapas," a Hawaiian word used to describe people of mixed ancestry.

"At Northwestern, the Asian-American presence is so strong," said Kwan, who is Chinese and white. "That was a little much for me because I didn't relate."

At other schools there are organizations for multiracial students, such as Brown University's Brown Organization of Multiracial and Biracial Students (BOMBS) and the Hapa Club the University of California at Los Angeles. They have some benefits, Kwan said.

"A lot of us share a common experience," he said. "We grow up in two different worlds within our own households."

But such a group might not be necessary at NU, Kwan said.

"Part of the joy of being mixed-race is that you have a lot of different backgrounds to draw from, so why sign up for a racially themed group to begin with, whether it's mixed-race, black, Asian, White or whatever?" he said.

Cameron Clark created the "Ethnically Ambiguous Kids Clique" Facebook group "for all my people out there who have a damn identity crisis every time they have to fill out a census," the group's description says.

Clark, who has a black father and white mother, said he spent much of his youth showing off the black side of his family.

"I am half African-American, but most people look at me and think of me as an All-American white boy," said Clark, a Medill senior.

Although Clark has joined black student groups on campus, he said he doesn't want to associate only with his black heritage.

"A lot of times, people think, 'Oh, well, he's too white for the black folks, and too black for the white folks," he said.

Clark said he thought other groups might be wary of a formal mixed-race organization.

Tedd Vanadilok, director of Asian/Asian American Student Affairs said the Multicultural Center would support anyone who wanted to start a mixed-race group on campus, as long as he or she gained a "critical mass" of members to sustain the group.

"Is there a significant population of mixed-race students in the student body? The answer is yes," Vanadilok said in an e-mail. "But would these mixed-race students want to start a student group? It's up to them to decide."

Reach Erica Schlaikjer at e-schlaikjer@northwestern.edu.

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