How 3 College Presidents Are Trying to Move Their Campuses Past Racial Tensions

During the last academic year, dozens of college presidents faced a similar dilemma. Minority students were occupying administrative offices, marching across campuses, and demanding immediate action to combat what they saw as racial injustices. The atmosphere was tense, and campus leaders had little time to decide how to react.

At least four of them — including two top administrators at the University of Missouri — eventually resigned. Some pledged to address activists’ demands, while a handful refused to respond directly. Others incorporated the concerns into continuing efforts to promote diversity and inclusion.

The Chronicle checked in with three presidents who have witnessed turmoil on their campuses. What progress have they made in calming racial tensions and keeping their promises to bring about change? Here’s what they had to say.

Towson University

During November’s nationwide wave of campus activism, Towson students began a sit-in at the president’s office and said they wouldn’t leave until Timothy J.L. Chandler, the interim leader, promised to respond to their demands. Mr. Chandler and several other senior administrators then worked extensively with the protesters to revise the language and make the requests more achievable.

Eight hours later, Mr. Chandler signed off on the revised document, pledging to resign if he did not meet all of the stated goals. Two months later Kim E. Schatzel, formerly provost at Eastern Michigan University, became Towson’s permanent leader, and Mr. Chandler returned to the provost’s office. He acknowledged in an interview with The Chronicle that he may have put his successor in a tough spot.

Did he? “He absolutely didn’t,” Ms. Schatzel said, with a laugh. “If you look at the requests that were signed off on, they were very reasonable.” They included greater faculty diversity and cultural-competency training.

Now, Ms. Schatzel said, “we’re on track to be able to meet the deadlines that we had talked about.” Shortly after she arrived on campus, she met with the students who had organized the sit-in, as well as leaders of the student government and the Black Student Union. She also announced that Towson would hire its first chief diversity officer.

But she quickly faced a racially charged controversy: In April a student allegedly made an offensive remark to a black employee in a campus cafe. Students responded with a stream of tweets using the hashtag #TheTowsonIKnow, and the Black Student Union called on administrators to improve their response to incidents motivated by bias and hate.

Ms. Schatzel said her administration plans to do just that. A team of students, faculty, and staff is revamping the process for bias-incident reporting.

“If you report something, when are we going to acknowledge it? Are you going to get an email back? How quickly will we be able to assess the situation? What type of feedback are you going to receive?” Ms. Schatzel said, explaining some of the questions the group is tackling.

The president said she often turns to social media to keep up with the campus conversation. She wakes up at 5 a.m. most days and almost immediately checks Twitter, Instagram, and Yik Yak to see what students are talking about.

“If I go meet with students, even if I say, ‘I want you to talk to me,’ I’m still the president — I’m going to get a filtered response,” she said. “Sometimes, if I look at tweets and the like, I might ask questions that I would never have known to ask.”

Oberlin College

In January Marvin Krislov, Oberlin’s president, drew attention for refusing to respond directly to students’ 14-page list of demands. The demands included granting immediate tenure to three professors, firing nine faculty and staff members, and renaming four campus buildings. The students threatened “a full and forceful response” if every demand wasn’t met.

The document, Mr. Krislov wrote, “explicitly rejects the notion of collaborative engagement” and “contains personal attacks on a number of faculty and staff members who are dedicated and valued members of this community.” He told The Chronicle at the time that he didn’t see any room for negotiation.

But in the months since, Mr. Krislov has softened his approach. He met several times with the students who wrote the demands during the spring semester. “All of our students come to campus believing that they can change the world, and that campuses are a great way to create the kind of ideal world that they want,” he said.

The activists whittled down their lengthy list to five priorities, including a website of resources for low-income students and better data collection on minority students’ academic success. Plans for taking action on those issues were incorporated into the college’s strategic plan, which was completed in March.

“We need to listen to and work with students — and faculty and staff — on some of these concerns in ways that we may not have done previously,” Mr. Krislov said.

In the spring, Oberlin debuted a new series of courses and campus programming called “Think, Create, Engage,” with “The Framing of Race” selected as the inaugural theme. A description on the college’s website characterizes the theme as “the historical, political, economic, cultural, and social processes that have produced white supremacy and the violent enslavement, genocide, and oppression of diverse groups of marginalized peoples.”

This fall, Mr. Krislov said, officials will start making recommendations for carrying out the college’s new plan, which includes a commitment to further diversifying students, faculty, and staff. Professors in the College of Arts and Sciences will soon complete a workshop on incorporating inclusive strategies into their teaching and their interactions with students and colleagues. As Oberlin expands its population of low-income and first-generation students, Mr. Krislov said he also hopes to offer more assistance to those who can’t go home and can’t afford meals during fall and spring breaks, when the dorms and dining halls are closed.

Much of the positive response to Mr. Krislov’s January statement came from Oberlin alumni, who applauded the president for taking a stand against what they saw as unreasonable requests. But Mr. Krislov said he’s tried to emphasize to alumni, particularly those from three or four decades ago, that they might not fully understand the concerns about racism and prejudice that current students are raising.

For instance, older alumni didn’t attend college in an era of debate over police shootings of African-American men. “Sometimes,” Mr. Krislov said, “there can be this disconnect.”

University of Washington

While most of the prominent protests over race took place last fall, students at the University of Washington staged demonstrations in the spring. They said university leaders were doing too much talking and weren’t moving quickly enough on promises to improve the racial climate.

In April about 200 protesters took over an event on microaggressions and issued seven demands to the administration, including a new community-policing model for campus law enforcement. Hundreds of students also walked out of classes in May and interrupted a meeting of the university’s Board of Regents with a demand that the institution divest from private-prison companies.

A similar protest about a year earlier had inspired Ana Mari Cauce, Washington’s president, to create a “race and equity initiative.” When she announced the plan, Ms. Cauce gave an emotional speech describing her personal experiences of racism and homophobia. (She identifies as Cuban-American and lesbian.)

During the first year of the race-and-equity effort, “there has been a lot of dialogue and talk,” Ms. Cauce said in an interview, responding to the students’ criticism. Cross-cultural understanding, she said, is an essential part of a more inclusive campus. More than a thousand students, faculty, and staff have participated in structured conversations about diversity throughout the past year, according to Ms. Cauce.

Many of today’s students believe bias and prejudice against minority communities should be things of the past, Ms. Cauce said. “It’s great that those are the expectations,” she said. “But I think the realities do fall short.” And she understands that some activists are frustrated by the pace of change: “Frankly, it’s not fast enough for me either.”

As part of the race-and-equity plan, Washington has started offering leadership workshops for administrators, professors, and students. The workshops, which cover implicit bias and other diversity topics, have proved popular, Ms. Cauce said. A campus-climate survey is in the works. And the university has increased its budget for recruiting and retaining faculty members from diverse backgrounds to $1 million across its three campuses.

Officials are also working with campus law-enforcement officials to review data on police stops and look for any racial patterns, and to expand bias training for officers.

The president has met with the protesters a couple of times in recent months. “We never stopped talking to the students who were demonstrating,” Ms. Cauce said, noting with a touch of pride that the protests were all peaceful. “And they never stopped talking to us.”

Still, she stressed that this particular group of activists shouldn’t be the sole agenda-setters for how the campus moves forward on racial-justice issues. Some minority students at Washington don’t agree with the protesters’ demands or tactics, she said, and many other student leaders are just as committed to promoting diversity and inclusion. Her goal is bringing those voices to the same table.

“We tend to focus on those stories where you’ve got a group of students with their fists in the air — which certainly is fine,” she said. “Protest has its place in our country and in this movement. But there also is a larger group of students that are really looking for common ground.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.