Riots and violence two years ago followed by the killing of a landlord in the Broadway Condominiums has fueled an ugly perception of southeast Iowa City and created stereotypes of the people who live there, according to a group of University of Iowa graduate students.

But it’s time to break down those walls and drop the bias, and Ted Gutsche said he hopes to help do that through a new website that he and his colleagues have launched as a way of sharing the stories of all Iowa City’s residents – including those on the southeast side of town.

According to Gutsche and his colleagues, Iowa City’s south side had the highest concentration of minorities by 2000, increasing 19 percent from 1990 to 2000. Numbers of minorities in southeastern neighborhoods were double that of the city’s average by 2009, according to Gutsche.

“We have had such a chance in demographics in this community,” said Gutsche, a doctoral student in journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa. “We really need to find a way to get the voices that are part of that change into the dialogue.”

The new website, CrossingBorders.us, got off the ground in May, and Gutsche said it’s an unfinished product that will be shaped by the people who use it. The hope is that community members will log on to share their own stories, or the stories of people they know who have moved to town, and the issues they’ve faced since arriving.

Using video clips, photos, artwork and words, Gutsche said, the project aims to paint a picture of the changing demographics in Iowa City and spark a lively and relevant conversation about how to embrace those changes rather than shun them.

“We believe that by empowering people to share their stories in their own words and by collecting stories from different – maybe even contrary positions – we can expose deeper meanings to our lives, to what we see, hear and feel,” according to the website.

The conversation topics might be heavy, Gutsche said.

“The stories are going to get hard … these are stories about the tensions that occur,” he said. “But they are conversations we need to have.”

Emily Inman, 22, of Iowa City, has posted her story on the site, sharing that she moved to town in 2007 from Chicago to attend the university and, as a Latina, immediately felt out of place.

“Over the years, my friends and I have experienced a great deal of stereotyping and racism while on campus and in the city,” Inman wrote on the site.

She recalled being called “many ignorant names” during a protest of a “black face” incident at Brothers Bar & Grill. And, Inman told The Gazette, she visited a church  in east Iowa City earlier this year and was shocked by the greeting she received.

“I walked in and they told me the Spanish mass wasn’t until noon and to come back then,” she said.

Inman wrote on the website that many of her friends plan to leave Iowa City after graduation, but she wants to stay.

“Despite how much I despise the racial tensions in Iowa City, I still love the community,” she wrote. “I also feel it is my calling and duty to stay. I want to fight for equal rights for all citizens in this community – someone has to be a part of the fight.”

Inman told The Gazette that she hopes the website becomes an outlet for civil discourse.

Its creators envision the site becoming a place for the community to turn should another controversy explode. Daniel Kinney, a doctoral student in art education who is working with Gutsche on the project, said they hope “the community, media, law enforcement and others turn to this site to measure their perceptions of the troubles we are seeing in how the community is dealing with change.”