Last Wednesday, a group of African-American students staged a public protest against racism on our campus. You can see video and read about it here. They chanted, "Silence no more," vowing to call out the racism that they saw.
As of yesterday, faculty response coalesced around the phrase "Complicit no more." There will be an in-person show of support today, posters to sign publicly, buttons, social media, and more.
I like this phrase very much, as it's aspirational and confessional. It acknowledges that each of us may be complicit in structural racism. It looks past specific incidents - a one student asked in class if they were talking to their drug dealer when on the phone (to use the calculator); a student in a suit asked if they had a court date; intimidation by security services - and pushes each one of us to get to work changing our campus climate. We are accountable.
Microaggressions matter. They compound. They exclude. And the fact that so many people think they don't matter is just a sign of the work we have to do.
UPDATE: Dominican Star article on the protests. Administration has been speaking out in solidarity with the students and we'll see what happens. Meeting today at 8:30 of Faculty to discuss actions.
Last week African-American students at Dominican University protested racism on campus. Here are two videos. The first is a short protest in the cafeteria. The second is long and outside the office of our President. Both videos are shared with permission of one of the protest organizers.
So what are the issues on our campus? That's a bit complicated. We've had several incidents of racist graffiti in dorms and at least one racist epithet uttered on campus by one student to another in a public space. These have been scattered over the years (and were well publicized on campus in both our student media and official condemnatory statements from administration). Students also speak of micro-aggressions in the classroom, from faculty, although I don't have permission to share these details. I expect in the week to come to have more information, hopefully a statement with demands detailing issues and demanding change. I promise to share them as appropriate, always mindful of the students' right to control their own narrative. I'm not a disinterested journalist here, but a white male tenured faculty member.
The protests came as a shock to some of my colleagues, judging from comments on social media, and even more so to alumni who viewed Dominican as a safe, nurturing, space. We are a relationship-centered university. We form close bonds among students, between students and faculty/staff, and are proud of our community. We are, or will be soon, a majority Hispanic institution, with 65% of this year's first-year class Latina/o. Our ties in the Chicago Latina/o community run deep (as I wrote about in this piece on our president's leadership on immigration reform). We also proud of our commitment to social justice. To be told of a campus climate of racism jars against our sense of self and mission.
It's also certainly true. There's no reason to question the lived experience of others, especially students taking the risk to protest publicly. Moreover, Dominican, like all institutions, partakes of the hierarchies of the society in which it exists. There is no ivory tower. Racism permeates Chicago, Illinois, and America (and beyond). Why should Dominican be exempt? Moreover, to acknowledge its truth does not erase the good things, the real change that our students undergo as a result of their education here, or the intense efforts of faculty and staff to make our campus safe, inclusive, and welcoming. Structural change is hard!
I take these protests as a moment to self-examine, first of all. I know my values and I know how I want to behave. But I, too, partake of the hierarchies in which I live. The pernicious nature of micro-aggressions is that the aggressor can be fully ignorant of his or her actions and be fully of good will, yet still turn a campus into a hostile space.
The irony is that many predominantly White colleges and universities appear to have the signs of progressive campus cultures with healthy race relations, especially in comparison to their 1950s predecessors...The problem is that they are signs of an alleged commitment that is rarely realized, and they give the false, and dangerous, impression that race relations on campus are much better than they really are. It is no wonder that so many universities lack even the basic data on faculty diversity or a plan to address systemic racism (much less define it).
Given the history of racism, wealth, and institution building on which all U.S. universities are constructed, the debate about Calhoun is specific but not unique. It may also be missing a larger point about the relationship between memory and politics. The legacy of racism is not just carved into the facades of university buildings; it is found in the persistence of inherited privilege that shapes the composition of the curriculum, the student body, and the faculty.
These things are true at Dominican University, for all its lack of fame and money. It's in a fantastically wealthy mostly white suburb of Chicago (River Forest), surrounded by West Chicago (Austin neighborhood), the African-American suburb of Maywood, and the heavily-Latin suburb of Melrose Park. Our buildings are gorgeous and gothic. As the forest preserve to our west adopts the fall colors, the campus glows in the late afternoon with reflected sunlight. We should not be surprised with our African American students articulate ways in which this environment is less than perfect for them.
I am grateful to these students for speaking out and for letting me share these videos. More to come.
In my recent CNN piece, I wrote about my university with both pride and realism. We are a relatively low-cost private school that does some things exceptionally well. Those things that we do well cost money, though. I wrote:
The Pell Institute's publication "Moving Beyond Access: College Success For Low-Income, First-Generation Students" lists advising, tutoring, mentoring, and intense interaction in the classroom as among the key features necessary to retain first-generation students. In other words, it's not enough just to help students get into an affordable college. Once accepted, we have to help them succeed. I've seen advising, special programs and small classes work wonders at Dominican University, where I teach, and we're just one of many student-oriented universities that provide great supports for students who need it. But such programs and low student-to-faculty ratios cost money, and across the country, cost-cutting is making it harder for such students to thrive.
In an original draft, I received some pushback from my editor for seeming too promotional, so I added the vague "we're just one of many ..." clause. Since the theme of the piece is "quality matters" not "Dominican is great," I didn't argue, but I had the sense that we really are pretty good at Dominican and that it's not an accident.
That's pretty exciting and is also news to me. We have wonderful students and I knew we were crushing the expected graduation rate (normed for wealth, race, first-generation, etc.), but not to this extent. Here's the whole section from in which Danneberg compares us to a rival school (sorry St. Xavier) that is not doing so well: Dannenberg writes, speculating about where a hypothetical Midwestern philanthropist should give his or her money [my emphasis]:
Our Midwestern philanthropist should consider contributing scholarship aid forundocumented and other needy students only to needy individual colleges and universities that make a “meaningful commitment to diversity” and education equity. In higher education, that means schools that serve minority and working class students and gets them through — to degree completion in comparable numbers.
It just so happens there’s a great example of such a school in the Chicago area and a nearby example of a not-so-great school when it comes to educational equity.
Both Dominican University and Saint Xavier University are pretty good non-profit, private colleges when it comes to access and enrollment of students from low-income and working class families. But check out Dominican’s completion rate as compared to Saint Xavier’s. Not only is Dominican higher, but there’s virtually no education equity gap between white and underrepresented minority students. In fact, Dominican has the highest completion rate of similar colleges nationwide that serve similar students with similar levels of academic preparation.
Our philanthropist, all education philanthropists, should consider giving to Dominican University and similar schools doing a relatively good job on educational equity. And in the process they should challenge nearby Saint Xavier University and similar schools to do a better job.
So how is this happening? I have some guesses.
We have a shield!
First, our students are great. But I assume that our peers also have great students, though perhaps some aspect of the admissions process comes into play. There could be some micro-demographic that shapes outcomes.
Second, we have robust systems that create links between advising, tutoring (academic enrichment), student services of all sorts (under the Dean of Students) and faculty. People do fail at Dominican, but no one falls through the cracks unnoticed. We notice. We intervene. We often succeed in helping people get back on track.
Third, as a professor, I can say that since my first day on campus, I've been inculcated in a culture based on "relationship-centered" teaching. That doesn't mean easy, but it does mean treating each student with respect and the attention they deserve.
Fourth, we have small classes and only teach 3 per term, not 4 or 5. That costs money, of course. It's money well spent according to these outcomes.
Fifth, we have great leadership, from our President on down. Here's a piece I wrote last summer about her decision to make Dominican a leader in educating undocumented students. She has a fine sense of the balance of mission and business. I don't always agree with her (no one should every always agree with their leaders!), but I do trust her.
At any rate, I'm thrilled to have the things we do well noticed by an outsider. Dear Anonymous Midwestern Philanthropists - we're ready for you to fund us!
I am a professor at a small Catholic university on the edge of Chicago. We have an extremely diverse population of students, a teaching-centered institution, a social justice mission, and I go to work feeling extremely lucky in many ways.
But especially today. Today we are holding our Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Investigations (URSCI) expo. I am the Director of URSCI and love the way our students' best work takes center stage through this annual event. Here's a video on the kinds of work students do and a taste of how I'll be spending my day.
This is American higher ed at its best. Our country is full of small schools with, at best, regional reputations, creating space for students to achieve on wildly new levels. These accomplishments come out of close mentoring relationships, the willingness to say yes to student ideas, and modest internal funding. We graduate a very high rate of students who come from backgrounds that, at other schools, get left behind. Of course, we are tuition driven, so things always feel precarious.
Lately, I've been reading a lot of debates about big public universities vs community colleges vs elite privates vs the University of Everywhere (MOOC Heaven). My kind of institution - small, private, not elite, tuition driven, not as cheap as a low-end public but still pretty affordable, relationship-centered - doesn't really have a place in these big national debates. Maybe it should, because I think the types of students we serve best get left behind by the big technophilic educational disruptors.
But enough grim thoughts for today. I'm off to be inspired. See you tomorrow.
