At Kansas, Student Leaders Take the Blame for Racial-Climate Concerns

Three student-government leaders at the University of Kansas at Lawrence face a difficult decision on Wednesday afternoon, one that a number of college administrators nationwide have grappled with in recent weeks as racial tensions have swirled on campuses.

They must decide whether to heed student activists’ calls for them to step down.

The divisions that have emerged at the Kansas flagship came into sharp focus last Wednesday, when the university system’s chancellor, Bernadette Gray-Little, moderated a campuswide forum on race, with 1,000 students, faculty, and staff in attendance. Many students of color described discrimination they said they had experienced, both on and off campus.

At the event, members of an activist group known as Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk suddenly rose up and took the stage to read a list of demands for change. The group then called for the audience to stand in solidarity with students of color and to proclaim that “black lives matter.”

Jessie Pringle, the student-body president, and Zach George, the vice president, have faced allegations that they did not stand up right away, though they have challenged that assertion. Neither of them responded to requests from The Chronicle for comment on Tuesday.

The senate’s executive committee saw the two leaders’ alleged indifference as a sign that neither “has the intention of responding to the crisis our black peers face on this campus,” according to a statement from its members. The committee approved a no-confidence vote in Ms. Pringle, Mr. George, and Adam Moon, the senate’s chief of staff, on Friday and called for all three to resign by 5 p.m. Wednesday or face impeachment hearings. The three released a statement outlining steps they would take to make the campus safer and more inclusive, but did not say whether they would step down.

The ultimatum was similar to activists’ demands at the nearby University of Missouri, where protests about the treatment of students of color led to the exit of that institution’s two top officials last week.

But the calls for the student leaders to step down stir broader questions about who should assume responsibility for improving a campus’s climate, and who should take the blame when problems surface. Is it a university system’s president? A campus’s chancellor? The dean of students? Student-government leaders?

All of those groups have a role to play in creating an inclusive climate, but the turmoil at Kansas shows that demands for change can strain all levels of campus leadership.

Mixed Views on Campus

Not all students at Kansas agree that Ms. Pringle, Mr. George, and Mr. Moon should step down. Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk has expressed its support for the committee’s no-confidence vote. But a petition supporting the student leaders, which had drawn more than 1,000 signatures as of Tuesday night, asserts that forcing the leaders to resign “sets a terrible precedent for future democratic processes.”

And the Black Student Union at Kansas has not taken an official stance on the resignation calls, said Chancellor Adams, the group’s vice president, in an interview with The Chronicle.

Mr. Adams, a sophomore who represents the union in the Student Senate, emphasized that the protest group is a separate entity from his organization, though he backed its list of demands. “We believe that there was another way to present those demands to people in positions of authority,” he said. “But we do understand that there is a lot of injustice happening around us.”

The difference between the union and the protest group, he said, “is that we believe in being respectful.”

Kansas leaders have responded to the turmoil with vows to spearhead change. Ms. Gray-Little wrote in a message to the university on Friday that “if there was one thing I took from Wednesday’s forum, it’s that students, faculty, and staff want action, and they want it now.”

Jeffrey S. Vitter, the provost and executive vice chancellor, said in a message to the campus on Tuesday that university officials were “assembling a small advisory team of faculty, students, staff, and administrators” to examine strategies for eliminating racism and improving retention and graduation rates of students of color. The group will outline an action plan by mid-January, Mr. Vitter wrote.

At Kansas, “our students are holding our own students accountable for not fostering this inclusive environment,” said Michael A. Chavez, a senior recruitment coordinator in the engineering school who also serves as co-adviser to the university’s Hispanic American Leadership Organization.

That means, Mr. Chavez said, “that we’re getting students to really think critically about the climate on campus here” — especially those who come from more privileged backgrounds, he added.

Students and faculty members have a key responsibility to help foster inclusion in the classroom and elsewhere, said Clarence E. Lang, an associate professor and chair of the department of African and African-American studies.

The Black Student Union’s Mr. Adams agreed, stressing that the senate needed to do more to improve the Kansas experience for students of color. “I think it’s the job of the senators to be aware of what’s going on and how things affect students on campus — not just their own groups, but everybody,” he said. As a legislative body, he added, the senate represents a clear mechanism for dealing with injustice.

Still, “we have upper-level administrators that have to give leadership on this,” Mr. Lang said. “They carry this burden as well.”

If Ms. Pringle, Mr. George, and Mr. Moon do not resign, Mr. Adams will be among the students who determine their fate if the senate proceeds with impeachment hearings. He said he would spend the next several days speaking with members of the Black Student Union before deciding where he would stand.

Mr. Chavez said he had witnessed Kansas students, faculty, and staff try to engage the campus community in discussions about race and inclusion for years. He was pleased to see such conversations finally attracting attention. But he said that in conversations students were telling him they felt “tired, and frustrated, and fearful.”

“I feel like students who are underrepresented on campus now have a voice,” he said. “With that voice, though, comes risk. People of privilege begin to question the validity of that voice, and that’s what frustrates me now.”