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March 01, 2005
Letter to the Editor: Administration failing to address racism
In the spring of 2002, other students and I organized a forum to discuss the effectiveness of the cultural breadth requirement, courses on diversity issues, and Hamline’s plan for the recruitment and retention of students and faculty of color.
I am deeply disappointed that over the past four years, the university’s administrators, faculty and students have consistently ignored or demonized student activists’ efforts to engage the campus in a genuine effort to truly enact our diversity policy and offer a curriculum that educates all students about racism and diversity.
Currently, Maisue Xiong and Colin Smith are under attack from students and faculty and ignored by administrators who, in a Dec. 10 e-mail to the campus, promised to “continue to examine and follow up on all the issues involved in the situation” supposedly arising from the letter to the editor expressing concerns about the quality of diversity education at Hamline and in Dr. Markowitz’s class. But after an initial meeting, only Deans Sneed and Sickbert have been willing to continue the discussion, and so far only in private.
I am disgusted that the deans faulted two students’ final attempt to be heard for starting a conflict whose true roots lie in the facts that:
a) The strength of the cultural breadth requirement has been deteriorating since it was conceived, as detailed by a social justice student’s in-depth senior project last year.
b) Many students over the years have found the Racial and Cultural Minorities class - one of the only Hamline classes to deal specifically with race - inadequate.
c) This institution of higher learning permits a professor to refuse meetings with his students (unheard of in the liberal arts) and excuses administrators from acknowledging students’ concerns (unfortunately, all too common).
It is time to stop individualizing this “situation” and examine it, as a community, for what it is. If we are truly committed to building a safe, inclusive learning environment that values “open communication” (as stated in the deans’ Dec. 10 letter), it is time to start listening to and valuing students’ voices.
It is far past time to address racism at Hamline at all levels: in the curriculum, in recruitment and hiring policies, and in the way people with institutional power interact with student leaders like Smith and Xiong, who push administrators and faculty to provide Hamline students with the education and the community we deserve.
Laura Wilson
CLA Student
Posted by msveum at March 1, 2005 07:34 PM
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