By tvlatt Jennings
Photog raphs by John H. White
Let's Ta k A bout Race
As racial conflict unfolds on college campuses across the country, Middlebury wrestles with tensions of its own.
LAST FALL, the Black Student Union at Middlebury organized a solidarity blackout in support of Black students at Middlebury and on other campuses around the United States. A photograph taken in front of Carr Hall shows hundreds of Middlebury students gathered on anunseasonably warm November evening. By designed necessity ("It is essentialwe center Black bodies and experi ences in this movement," the BSU wrote on its Facebook page), persons identifying as Blackstood in the front; behind them stood white students, faculty, staff. !Two weeks later, the Middlebury community would be looking inward after an incident in a College dining hall. A white first-year student had worn a sombrero to dinner and when asked by a fellow student, a Latino senior, why she had chosen to wear it, her frivolous answer was too difficult for him to ignore. His attempt to explain how her actionswere hurtful to him-that within the current context shewas appropriat ing a culture, his culture-were met, those present say, with indifference. The resulting argument spilled over and ignited on social media, particularly the anonymous forum Yik Yak, and though students were leaving the following week forThanksgiving break, the College administration ar ranged a pair of town hall-style forums-immediately before and immediately after the breakc-to discuss the issues of cultural appropriation, community standards, freedom of expression, and what it means to be an inclusive community. By the second forum-a capacity event in Dana
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Seated in front: Miguel Fernandez 'as, Chief Diversity Officer. Back, left to right: Katy Smith Abbott, Dean of the College; Roberto Lint Sagarena, Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity; Baishakhi Taylor, Dean of Students
mistakes and engage with others; I want us to have an open and complex understanding of free speech-free speech is not the opposite of inclusivity; the very way we create a more inclusive community is by exercising free speech and continuing to create understanding even in the midst of tension-filled conversations; [there needs to be}on-going reflection about structural bias. We have been talking about structural issues in which racism and other forms of exclusivity are built into our systems. I think this is the biggest challenge for all ofus."
When Patton talks about inclusivity; she'saddressing a very important distinction with diversity. Roberto Lint Sagarena says, "Diversifying our student bodies doesn't necessarily do awaywith issues of difference and the challenges that come with them-being on campus doesn't automatically make you feel likeyou're apart of campus. Sohow does campus culture change to reflect apluralism in the student body? Is it a matter of simple assimilation and everybody becomes a part of the same? Or is it an acceptance of difference and a respect for difference, where one can have an affinity group and
be with one's own, but also move beyond that and be accepted by all?"
Leslie Harris, an associate professor of history and African American studies at Emory University; says that these issues are not new, and that she'sstruck by the similarities in student demands today and the demands at the dawn of higher education integration 50 years ago.
Shepoints out that many segments of societyin the United States have aggressively resegregated and that when students arrive at college they are corning to live in a community that, by design, isju st as aggressive in its integration. And there are more students-approximately r4 million 18-24 year olds are in baccalaureate programs now, compared to 2 million in 1949-which means more students from diverse backgrounds. ''.And you can'tjust add and stir,"she says. "It's thework of institutions to think through what it means for all of these people to come together.You have to be flexible-flexible but strong."
Katy Smith Abbott, the dean of the College, agrees. Throughout last summer and into the fall, she worked with Miguel Fernandez, Middle bury'schief diversity officer, andAndi Lloyd, vice president for academic affairs, onan initiative that would help students become more resilient, and she says that it's dawned on her that these same lessons can be ap plied to the institution.
"We should hold ourselves institutionally to the same standard,"she says."What doesit mean to be an excellent institution with adeephistory and many traditions, some of which are not that great, and to say, 'You know what? We can be excellent and we can still move from our original shape to something new."'
"Racism in thiscountry has been very creative,"says senior Debanjan Roychoudhury. "It's been very willing to change and adapt, so we need to be similarly willing to adapt and be very creative in how we address these issues. That}who we are! Let's use our creativity ro fundamentally shape the way we think about inclusion."
Already this year, Patton and the administration have implemented a number of programs and initiatives that she feels will make Middle bury a more inclusive place. She's engaged a pair of consultant groups to lead diversityworkshops with offices that interact most closely with students and to assist in recruiting a diverse faculty applicant pool; she's facilitated discussions between the Board ofTrustees andAfrican American studies scholars (including Leslie Harris), who specialize in structural bias; she's directed the Athletics Department and the Depart ment of Public Safety to examine inclusive practices in their respective areas; she's approved the hiring of two full-time counseling fellows for
Editor}Note: Racial andethnic intolerance are not the only issuesconfronting Middlebury as itseeks tobecome amore inclusive community. Sexistandhomophobic offenses-as wellastheacceptance of religious and ideological differences-mustallbeaddressed ifthe campus is tobeanenvironment where everyonefe els valued For this story, though, we've chosen tofocus specifically on race and ethnicity.
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that we are moving beyond any one incident and are addressing bigger issues, but I worry that too often experiences are becoming general ized, that people are being put into categories-'all of you' or 'all of us.' I recognize that a lot of the entrenched problems on this campus are the legacy of systemic oppression, but one of the things I struggle with is how to express solidarity with agroup of people, my people, while still expressing myself as an individual."
This student added: "I think a lot of what's troubling to a number of students of color is that we're afraid to throw each other under the bus by saying something vvrong because you want to stand in solidarity. But the truth is, it's impossible to agree on allof these things."
Nia Robinson Freshman
Chicago, Illinois
EAR IS A WORD THAT HAS COME UP AGAIN and again in my conversa tions. There's the fear of being subjected to further racist insults,
be they implicit or explicit. (Nia Robinson speaks of returning to her hall one night to find the word "Negroes"written multiple times on a dry-erase board attached to a friend 's door.) And if you're white there is the fear of saying the wrong thing, of being branded a racist. "Being called aracist is sopowerful," says Miguel Fernandez. "Itshuts everything down, the conversation stops. All of a sudden you're not talking about whatever offended the person of color. You're arguing about whether someone is or isn't aracist."
One white student I spoke to says that she has put herself out there, and she'sbeen burned ; burned to the point shewas hesitant to talk to me for this story; she says she's unlikely to engage with these issues publicly anymore-at least not at Middlebury.
"I recognize that the pain of people in this community is very real, I recognize that the anger is real," she says. "The sentiments are honest and heartfelt, but I've found that it's too difficult to have constructive conversations because the passion is too great, the anger is too great. I've found that too often we each focus on the righteousness of our side of the argument, and then we're not focusing on the argument itsel£"
As an example she points to a series of episodes involving the student newspaper, the Middlebury Campus. In February, a collection of cultural organizations sent an email to the student body calling on the Campus to make amends for "continuously publish{ing} articles that have both subtly and explicitly reinforced the marginalization of severalgroups" at Middlebury. The letter specifically condemned the decision to publish several op-eds, which contained views that the letter writers felt "actively harm[ed}and systematically silenc{edJ minority groups at the College." In response, the Campus editors penned apair of op-eds (''APaper for the People" and ''A.More Inclusive Campus")inwhich theydefended their decision (and right) topublish opinion pieces-in these cases contributed
pieces-that run the risk of offending readers as long as standard journal istic guidelines were enforced. The editors also acknowledged that the paper "suffers acutely from alack of racially diverse voices"and vowed to findways to make the newspaper more reflectiveof the entirecommunity. (Full disclosure: I serve as an advisor to the Campus.)
This issue with the Campus does seem to illustrate a troubling point, perhaps the one opinton shared by most: students are feeling pushed toward silence.There'sthe young woman and otherswho fear the conse quences of expressing challenging opinions, and there are the organiza tions who believe such expression, as it was conducted, systematically silences minority groups.
One student suggests-and others agree-that 90 percent of the student body is not engaging in substantive conversations about race. She says that about IO percent of the student bodycould be described as activists when it comes to racial discourse. About 30 percent don't think about
I 've been in situa_tions where peopl e have said some hurtful things to me, and my first reaction is to attack what they said and demand an explanation for how they could be so insensitive. But then I also have to remember that not everyone is comi ng from the same place. They may have experiences that led them to say what they said, or maybe they just don't know that what they said is hurtful.
I know it's really hard to tell people who are on the receiving end of a hurtf ul comment to tempe r their reaction, because I believe that we do have every right to react in a way that's true to ourselves, but at the same time. if we want to have this conversation, if we· want these issues to stop, and if we want to make Middlebury a tru ly inclusive community for everyone. we have to think about it in terms bigger than any one person.
Because it's not about me. It's not just about the person next to me. It's about all of the students who are here now, the students who will be here in 20 years. I don't want to come back and visit and find out they're having the same conversations. So let's drop all assump tions and start looking at people as people. Malcolm X said, "Don't be in such a rush to condemn someone for not knowing, because there was a ti me when you didn't know what you know now." But it's really hard to recognize that when you're in pain.
to meet with students in Carr Hall; not as a substitute for, say, visiting a writing tutor in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Research, but as away ofletting students know these resources exist.
And the AFC is a space where alienated students can be themselves. ''.And that'sgreat," says Sagarena. "But it needs tobuild up to something. I want the Center to serve as a home base for previously alienated students who can then take ownership of the rest of the campus. There needs to be a circulation to the Center;we need to be able to help students expand beyond the AFC, andwe need to be able to bring in students who would have never thought about what it means to come from a historically underrepresented community."
Not long after I talked to Sagarena, the College announced that a
popular student-run program calledJusTalkswould become mandatory for incoming first-year students, beginning next year. I spent agood deal of time talkingwith Molly McShane, a senior, aboutJusTalks, whichwas founded fouryears ago to provide students with the tools and opportuni ties to hold conversations about difficult topics.
McShane, who is white, attended the National Cathedral School, an all-girls school in Washington, D.C. She discovered]us Talks as a sopho more at Middlebury, a time when she was struggling to connect with other studentswho found value and community in conversations about identity and power.]u sTalks was her answer-she was able to give voice toher experiences (and learned from listening to others\ she alsofound a community who shared her interest in talking about difficult subjects. She says that the smallgroup settingsbuild up trust and help foster deeper, more challenging-and also more affirming- conversations over time.
Next year, every first-year student will participate in aJusTalks daylong event during either winter term or spring semester. "Setting the framework in a student 's first year builds a foundation," says McShane. "It's a way of saying to every new student, 'These are the conversations we have and this is the way we treat each other."'