The Diversity Awareness Week at Georgia, better known as D.A.W.G Days, will offer students the opportunity to learn not only about the people around them but also about themselves, organizers said.

Throughout the week, campus housing communities and a number of student organizations, such as the Diversity Council of University Housing and the Institute of African-American Studies, will host a variety of events that focus on diversity.

Ashley Lester, a Diversity Council adviser helping plan the week’s activities, said she hopes the events will make students more aware of diversity around them, but more importantly make students more self-aware.

“The more we understand ourselves, the better we are able to understand the people around us,” Lester said.

Lester went on to say some students have no idea what their own ancestral background is and she hoped these activities would at least make them start thinking about it.

“We want to put that question in their head,” she said.

Brooke Flanagan, a sophomore from Marietta and a member of the Diversity Council, the organization responsible for planning the D.A.W.G. Days activities, said the point of the events is to get people thinking.

Lester said he thought students who are not from a southern or Georgia background often felt more out of place at the University compared to students at other colleges and universities around the country. She hoped the D.A.W.G. Days events would encourage students to start or continue to learn about one another.

This year will be the 14th time the University has put on a Diversity Awareness Week, but this year will be the first time Diversity Council, a student organization, will organize the events.

The Myers community will play host to guest speaker Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the first female African-American student at the University. Her talk will focus on what it was like for Hunter-Gault to be the only female African-American student.

The events do not only pertain to racial diversity but also religious diversity. The Russell Community will be having a religious discussion called “Spiritual Kaleidoscopes.”