When Mi Gente, a group that represents Latino students at Duke University, announced that it would boycott a spring recruiting weekend for Latinos because its members were tired of simply being “poster children for brochures,” black and Asian-American student groups took to social media to pledge their support.
Meanwhile, they were busy with their own demands. All three wanted safe spaces where students could feel comfortable talking about their problems and an accelerated timeline for hiring minority professors.
The Asian and Latino activists demanded centers that celebrated their cultures, and the black students wanted a crackdown on hate speech and the addition of “institutional racism and anti-oppression” topics in the freshman curriculum.
‘Diversity, just measured in terms of numbers, is not the point. Creating an environment that’s truly inclusive is the hard part.’
Outwardly, the groups fed off one another’s momentum as they presented their demands to the administration. But behind the scenes, some stresses were emerging.
In November a Korean-American student wrote an open letter to Duke’s president, Richard H. Brodhead, saying that racial slurs and other acts of discrimination weren’t being taken as seriously when Asian-Americans were the targets. The slights against them, she wrote, are considered “lower on the hierarchy of pain” than the discrimination faced by black students because of the nation’s history of slavery.
“Moreover, society tells us we are the ‘model minority,’ so what do we have to really complain about?” Elizabeth Kim wrote. “We learn to be silent.”
What’s happening at Duke isn’t unusual as students confront difficult questions about racial identity and their place in higher education. But the convergence of demands, and the ways in which student groups have responded, offer insights for universities struggling to accommodate increasingly diverse student bodies.
Last year a number of racially charged incidents at Duke frayed nerves on the campus, including one in which a student admitted he had hung a noose from a tree. Similar incidents in recent months have touched off protests at campuses nationwide.
But while many of the campaigns have been attributed to “students of color,” they have tended to be led by black students, and primarily dominated by their concerns. That’s due, in part, to the influence of the Black Lives Matters movement and its campaign to combat violence against African-Americans in the wider society.
Claremont McKenna College, where controversy over how Latino students were described in a clumsily written email led to a dean’s resignation, is an exception.
At Duke, said Henry Washington, president of the university’s Black Student Alliance, collaboration is a worthwhile goal, but “engaging across these communities gets tricky because the reality is that student experiences are so specific to our ethnic groups, and sometimes our needs are different.” Even within black, Asian, and Latino groups, students’ ethnicities and concerns vary widely.
Inclusivity, Not Numbers
Administrators who have been accused of dragging their feet in meeting students’ demands say they’re trying to help students find common ground, talk across racial lines, and identify reasonable and attainable goals they can all work toward.
“Diversity, just measured in terms of numbers, is not the point,” Stephen Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education, said in an interview. “Creating an environment that’s truly inclusive is the hard part.”
From 2013 to 2015, the proportion of Latino first-year students at Duke grew from 7 percent to 10 percent, while the proportion of black students remained at 11 percent and Asian students at 27 percent.
Meanwhile, many Latino students have grown impatient as the percentage of faculty members hasn’t caught up. The number of Latino faculty members inched up from 1.8 percent of the faculty in 2005 to 2.6 percent in 2015.
In a letter to the university published this week in the campus newspaper, Mi Gente said the dearth of Latino faculty members is one reason the group will no longer work with the admissions office to organize and help run a four-day recruiting weekend for Latino students.
The group said it no longer felt comfortable encouraging Latino students to enroll.
“It is time that Duke recognize that its students of color should not bear the burden of being academics, educators, poster children for brochures, panelists regarding diversity, Latinx student recruiters, party planners, and students,” the group said. Instead Mi Gente “will channel our energies into demanding that our voices be heard and that our community be represented.”
The letter called for the creation of a Latino cultural center, more Latino faculty members, an office, and a Latino-studies department with a major, minor, and tenured faculty members. The students also demanded a public apology “for the routine negligence” accorded to Latino issues at Duke.
Mi Gente requested a cultural center and more Latino faculty members and administrators back in 2005, and the requests haven’t been met, the group said.
“This boycott of the Latino Student Recruitment weekend is the medium through which Mi Gente is demanding that the Duke Latinx students are invited to the table with administration as they make changes to make this university a safer space,” Gloria Tomlinson, a senior who is co-president of the student group wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
‘Privileges’ and ‘Burdens’
Duke’s Asian and Asian-American student groups also want to be sure their voices are heard.
“We bear the privileges of not being black in America, but we also carry the burdens of not being white in this country,” Christine Lee, a sophomore and student leader in Duke’s Asian Students Association, wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
Protests by black and Latino students haven’t kept her from speaking up but instead “have helped me to develop and empower my own voice.”
But what happens when those voices are reverberating among like-minded students?
Mr. Nowicki said he’d like to have a better understanding of what students mean when they demand safe spaces.
“We need to find a balance between providing that safe place and asking students not to always feel the need to be in that space. We fail our students if we don’t challenge them,” he said.
“I know a fabulous student who’s a gay, black Muslim. OK, so which is his safe space?” Mr. Nowicki asked. The Muslim life center, the Black Student Alliance, the LGBT network? “I don’t want that student to feel like he has to choose, because our students have multiple identities” that add to the richness of the student experience, he said.
Mr. Nowicki described a dinner he hosted recently for a diverse group of students at his house. They started by talking about how they tended to view different racial groups. “For the next 45 minutes, it was black, Hispanic, Asian, and white kids opening up about how ‘I’m not really good at math just because I’m Asian’ or ‘I’m not good at basketball just because I’m black.’”
He conceded that that’s just one small step the university can take.
Duke will continue a series of get-togethers at faculty members’ homes as one way to stimulate the kinds of discussions that need to take place. The administration, he said, “can’t simply mandate increased engagement in a top-down fashion. Fundamental change needs to be embraced by the students themselves.”
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.
