"After the training session, we did not feel, 'OK now were ready to jump in the campus and tackle all conflicts,'" Cheng says. "There were other issues--how do campus groups feel about having us around, how do we decide who mediates what, issues of confidentiality."
Epps notes that this past year has been "gratefully free" of major racial disputes on campus that might involve the work of the mediators.
And although tutors and students say the service is an innovative approach to settling racial conflicts, some tutors say professionals, not students, should be handling the volatile issue of racial tension.
"I think it is an unfair burden for students to have handle," Angela Gonzales, the Kirkland House race relations tutor, said in February. "It's almost as if we are shifting the responsibility away from ourselves."
But Epps maintains that students, including first-years, would be an important addition to race relations advising and conflict mediation.
"Undergraduates can be extraordinary," he says. "Adults often tend to be stuck in their old ways."