March
26 ,
2004
Campus
Moves Ahead on Imperatives Outlined at Forum
With the return from spring break,
President Joanne V. Creighton and many other members of the Mount
Holyoke community are moving forward with a four-part plan to
strengthen the College’s longstanding commitment to diversity.
President Creighton outlined four imperatives at a community forum March 10 at
which students, faculty, and staff discussed how to live, learn, and work together
in greater mutual understanding and respect. The imperatives seek to “root
out stereotyping and insensitivity, create a climate of achievement for all students,
celebrate cultural diversity, and demonstrate institutional commitment,” Creighton
said.
The community forum was prompted, in part, by concerns voiced by ALANA students
and other members of the community about a number of issues affecting their experience
at the College, including the recent departures of several top-level women of
color from the administration. In addition, a campus incident earlier this semester
provoked additional apprehension among members of the community about the educational
climate for students of color here. Earlier that day, students and others had
come together at a rally at Blanchard around these topics.
At the forum, President Creighton committed herself and the institution to a
number of concrete steps.
First, in the imperative to root out stereotyping and insensitivity, President
Creighton committed to:
• sponsor and help other community members sponsor lectures, workshops,
and other programs that will help raise awareness about what leading scholar
Claude Steele calls “stereotype threat” and other kinds of insidious
vestiges of racism. Steele is the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences
at Stanford University. He has written extensively on issues and challenges faced
by students of color and women at American institutions of higher education and
in other settings;
• support coordination, through human resources, of campus diversity awareness
and educational programs;
• support students, faculty, and staff in developing an anti-racist statement
that is displayed prominently on our Web site and in our publications.
In the imperative to create a climate of achievement for all
students,
• President Creighton formed the Presidential Commission on Diverse Community
earlier
this year;
• committed the institution to
hiring a faculty member on special assignment to work closely with her, the dean
of faculty, and the faculty as a whole to give heightened urgency to an action
agenda. This appointment will be made before the end of this term, if possible.
Many faculty members are already running or developing programs aimed at ensuring
that the educational environment supports all students, while others are eager
to become engaged in these efforts, Creighton noted.
Third, in the imperative to celebrate cultural diversity, President Creighton
will support hiring an assistant dean of students for multicultural affairs to
work in the dean of the College area. The new assistant dean will help advise
ALANA cochairs, support cultural organizations, facilitate cultural programming,
and make productive connections to the Office of Student Programs, the Career
Development Center, and other offices and services. This position will be filled
by next fall.
Fourth, as part of the imperative to demonstrate institutional commitment, President
Creighton said Mount Holyoke will step up “affirmative and creative efforts
to hire more persons of color for positions across the College.”
Creighton noted, “We will target, in particular, openings in the Office
of the Dean of the College, the Career Development Center, and Student Health
Services. Working with the faculty, we will try to sustain the impressive success
resulting in 18 of 41 (or 44 percent) of recently hired faculty being persons
of color, a record unmatched, I believe, by any peer institution in the country.
It is a reflection of the widespread commitment to the extraordinary educational
benefits of diverse perspectives across the curriculum.”
Creighton committed to setting up an ad hoc ALANA advisory committee “to
share ideas, to develop a specific agenda with clear time lines, to track progress,
and to witness our steady progress toward common goals.”
This week, a letter detailing these action steps has been sent to ALANA students
who have approached the administration with their concerns. In her letter, Creighton
noted that articulating the imperatives represents only a “starting point” in
working with the many members of the Mount Holyoke community committed to moving
forward on “a robust agenda of making Mount Holyoke a place that values
and supports every single student.”
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