When Pursuing Diversity, Victory Is Hard to Define

They shouted their outrage through megaphones. Last month black students at the University of Missouri’s flagship campus blocked the homecoming parade to voice their concerns about racism, how they felt unwelcome on their own campus. “It is our duty to fight for freedom,” they chanted, echoing the well-known activists’ refrain. “It is our duty to win.”

This week brought a dramatic outcome. Students who had demanded a change in leadership got it when two top administrators stepped down. By all accounts, the protesters won.

Racial Tensions on 4 Campuses

Thomas Bastitellli

The University of Missouri is just one of many institutions where concerns over the racial climate have sparked campus protests. Here are four other examples from this year.

University of Oklahoma

In March a video surfaced of a chant by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity that included a racial slur and a reference to lynching. David L. Boren, the university’s president, quickly expelled the two students who had led the chant, officials disciplined two dozen others, and the chapter was closed. An existing group of African-American students known as OU Unheard organized demonstrations and called for other changes, including more minority faculty members and more scholarship money for students of color. The university has hired a vice president for diversity, the former Oklahoma state senator Jabar Shumate.

Wesleyan University

The student newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus, ran a widely criticized op-ed in September that questioned the legitimacy of the Black Lives Matter movement. Student activists called for a boycott of the Argus and for the paper to lose its funds from the Connecticut campus’s student assembly unless it met a list of demands, including diversity training for all staff members and reserving a space for minority students’ perspectives on Page 1. In an open letter to the Wesleyan community, some students also slammed President Michael S. Roth for defending free speech over the concerns of minority students. The assembly voted last month to study the possibility of taking away some of the Argus’s money and using it for paid positions at other campus publications.

Ithaca College

Two incidents in October sparked anger on the campus: a panel where two white, male Ithaca alumni referred to an African-American alumna who had expressed her “savage hunger” to succeed as “the savage,” and a “Preps & Crooks” party held by an unaffiliated fraternity encouraging the “Crooks” to dress in a “thuggish style.” Dozens of faculty members signed an open letter condemning the “savage” comments and the inadequate response from the New York college’s administration, and both professors and students have scheduled no-confidence votes against the president, Thomas R. Rochon. About a thousand students on the campus of nearly 7,000 walked out of classes this week and held a rally to call for Mr. Rochon’s resignation.

Yale University

After the Intercultural Affairs Council sent an email last month urging students not to wear racially insensitive costumes on Halloween, a residence-life official raised free-speech concerns and questioned “implied control” over students’ choices. The next day, the university’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity was accused of turning away minority students from a party, saying, “White girls only.” President Peter Salovey and Jonathan Holloway, the university’s top undergraduate dean, did not address the incidents publicly for several days, further provoking anger among students of color. The two administrators have said that, before Thanksgiving, they will outline steps to improve the climate for minority students.

—Sarah Brown

Yet that victory is complicated. “Two kings’ heads rolled,” as one professor told The Chronicle, but the campus remained largely as it was before: a veritable town of almost 35,000 students from different backgrounds, with various understandings of diversity, power, and how to get along. The university announced changes — including plans for a diversity officer and mandatory diversity training — even as it responded to threats of violence. One student said the recent protests were “just the beginning.” He need not look far to see that short-term victories don’t guarantee much.

People in higher education have been watching closely the events in Columbia. Some, like Calvin L. Warren, an assistant professor of American studies at George Washington University, see the ouster of the president and chancellor as satisfying but, ultimately, “an illusion of change.”

Mr. Warren, whose work focuses on African-American history, black nihilism, and ethics, praises the courage, sacrifice, and resolve of Missouri’s student activists. At the same time, he is cautious not to make too much of the results. Symbolic gains are not the same as systemic ones.

“Because people want to believe in higher education,” he says, “they translate minor changes into great victories.”

Students across the country, from Ithaca, N.Y., to Claremont, Calif., mounted protests this week. They are fed up with racial injustices on their campuses and feel empowered to push for change. Many institutions — some riven by protests or shamed by bigotry — are weighing lists of demands, an array of strategies for promoting inclusion. But changing a racial climate is a long-term struggle, students, faculty, and administrators agree. And nobody, anywhere, can say exactly what it would mean to win.

Outrage in Oklahoma

Calling out overt displays of racism is relatively easy. Unacceptable behavior is more visible and easier to eliminate than systemic inequity.

That was the case in March after a video surfaced of a racist chant by fraternity brothers at the University of Oklahoma. Members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, aboard a bus, sang to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” vowing never to allow black men into their brotherhood. They used a racist slur and referred to lynching.

Protests, candlelight vigils, and national attention followed. So did a swift response from the university. David L. Boren, the president, spoke in unusually blunt terms.

“There is zero tolerance for this kind of racist and bigoted behavior,” he said at a news conference the day after the video surfaced. “These people don’t deserve to be called Sooners.” He cut ties with the fraternity’s campus chapter and expelled the two leaders of the chant.

That was the easy part. Mr. Boren’s actions may have raised First Amendment concerns, but they offered a certain moral satisfaction. Meeting the demands of a group of black students called OU Unheard, a list presented months before the crisis, has been slower work.

Most of what the students are calling for is administrative: more black faculty members, more money for organizations that serve black students, and expanded retention efforts, among other things.

On some fronts, there has been progress. A vice president to oversee diversity efforts was hired just weeks after the video spread widely. Each college is taking on an associate dean or director who will focus on diversity and inclusion. Incoming students are now required to take five hours of diversity training.

Tougher Challenges

Meanwhile, OU Unheard is seeking another change, one that is grand and nebulous: improving the university’s “atmosphere.”

That task lacks clear metrics and someone who can own it. Yes, the atmosphere is a product of institutional decisions and priorities. But it also reflects scores of choices made every day by thousands of students, faculty, and staff. Where do you sit at lunch? Do you ever really interact with people of different races? When they share their experiences and opinions, how do you react? Do you listen to what they say, however painful it may be, or do you reject it out of hand?

Turmoil at Mizzou

In 2015, student protests over race relations rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, in Columbia, and spawned a wave of similar unrest at colleges across the country. Read more Chronicle coverage of the turmoil in Missouri and its aftermath.

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Being able to engage in productive, respectful dialogue is a good start, says George Henderson, a professor emeritus of human relations, education, and sociology at Oklahoma. But true inclusion, he says, requires something deeper, especially when many spaces on campus remain segregated.

Over the years, there’s been change on the campus, to be sure, and Mr. Henderson, who was the third black professor hired at Oklahoma, in 1967, has experienced it firsthand. During the ferment of the 1960s and ’70s, he says, activists sought, and won, a series of objectives: changes in the curriculum, the presence of black administrators, and efforts to attract and retain graduate students of color. “We declared victory,” he says.

But it was fleeting. New minority faculty members were hired, but many soon left, he says, because the campus had not truly embraced them. “Progress,” he says, “was illusory.”

Even these days, says Mr. Henderson, a diverse student body or faculty should not be the only end goal. A certain number does not guarantee inclusion.

Faculty members tend to stick to their own group, he says. So do students. “I hear as many black students say they’re more comfortable with black people as I hear white students say they’re more comfortable with white people,” the professor says. “At what point do we say we feel comfortable with people on campus without the qualification?”

For students, the series of crises on campuses across the country, linked by social media, can be both empowering and exhausting. “Mizzou is OU!” OU Unheard recently posted on Twitter, referring to a new hashtag campaign to share what it’s like to be a black college student. “Educate those who do not know how it feels to be #BlackOnCampus!”

The catalog of racial incidents can also eclipse one another, and collective amnesia can set in, as one activist suggested in response. “It’s like we forget the SAE thing JUST happened.”

Slights and Harassments

Not long after Capri’Nara Kendall, a black woman, enrolled at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a white classmate asked her if she was there on an athletics scholarship. Other students would ask her the same question, which always made her feel unwelcome. Yes, she had received a scholarship, an academic one.

Two years ago, Ms. Kendall helped create the viral Twitter campaign #BBUM (Being Black at the University of Michigan). Students used the hashtag to recount their experiences on the campus. Many felt angry and isolated, they said, describing a slew of racial harassments and slights. The social-media surge carried Ms. Kendall and other members of the university’s Black Student Union to the forefront of a national discussion of race. Frustration, funneled into 140 characters, reached students far and wide, inspiring similar campaigns on other campuses.

Soon high-tech expression gave way to old-school tactics. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day last year, the Black Student Union delivered seven demands to Michigan’s administration. They included providing emergency funds to students struggling financially, a new campus multicultural center, and increasing the BSU’s budget. Members of the group started meeting with administrators weekly.

Although Ms. Kendall, now a senior, credits the university for meeting some of the demands, she still worries about the dearth of students who look like her. The enrollment of black students has dropped since 2006, when Michigan voters approved a ban on considering race in college admissions. This year, less than 5 percent of all students on campus are black, down from almost 8 percent in 2005. One of the BSU’s demands had been to increase that number to 10 percent. “I probably won’t see that in my lifetime,” she says. “I can’t say students of color are satisfied.”

Recently, Michigan announced plans to recruit more high-achieving, low-income students, part of a broad plan to expand campus diversity without considering applicants’ race. Making the campus more welcoming, Ms. Kendall says, depends on enrolling and retaining more underrepresented-minority students (almost 13 percent in this year’s freshman class, compared with 10 percent last year). The campus climate can’t improve, she says, unless the university enrolls more students of color.

In Ms. Kendall’s experience over the last two years, that climate hasn’t changed much. She was pleased to see so many white students turn out for a “die in” following the deaths of two black men, Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, in encounters with the police. Nonetheless, she doesn’t think many white students are concerned about the minority students’ experiences — or their feelings. This week a black friend relayed an exchange on a campus bus: As she was reading about the protests at the University of Missouri, a white student tapped her on the shoulder and warned her against similar action in Ann Arbor.

Such stories remind Ms. Kendall why she got involved with the Black Student Union in the first place. Yet pushing for change, like the universitywide race-and-ethnicity course requirement the group demanded, is tiring when you’re taking 15 credits, working part time, and preparing to graduate. “I’m not going to lie,” she says. “I’m kind of burnt out.”

As the BSU’s leader, Ms. Kendall is not about to abandon activism. She planned to meet on Friday with Michigan’s president, Mark S. Schlissel, to discuss the university’s strategic plan for increasing campus diversity. “The momentum has not died, but it’s like, OK, where do you go from here?” she says. “I see the same cycle of students becoming activists, exposing issues the university is having, and the university giving them just enough so that the PR dies out.”

Longtime observers have seen that cycle, too. Protests come and go; college bureaucracies endure.

Passing On Insights

As an undergraduate at Michigan in the late 1970s, Elizabeth James sometimes found a racial slur scrawled on her friends’ doors, or her own. She once saw effigies of gorillas hanging from trees. As part of a tight-knit group of black students, she says, she didn’t feel as isolated or angry as many students do today. “We were mainly just trying to hold on to a semblance of black pride,” recalls Ms. James, who graduated from Michigan in 1982 and earned a master’s there two years later. “We were discussing issues among ourselves rather than pushing for broader, systemic change.”

Now the Black Student Union’s faculty adviser, Ms. James has watched waves of activism rise and fall. Something about the latest round, sparked by the #BBUM campaign, is different, she thinks. Technology has helped students mobilize — and publicize their message — like never before.

But the Twitter age might have a downside, too. “Sometimes the speed with which things come, there’s a level of impatience there,” Ms. James says of students. “I’m always trying to get them to be patient with one another, to say, OK, we’re about to embark on a long journey. You’re going to be dealing with race issues your whole life.”

To that end, Ms. James talks with students about the importance of passing on insights, lessons learned from protests, to younger students. She sees more of them in new roles, serving on committees alongside administrators. “For once I can say that there is a movement instead of a moment,” she says. “They’re doing the hard, quiet work that goes on behind the scenes. Sometimes, that’s when the hardest work gets done.”

But how much can happen in a year? Or four?

Walter M. Kimbrough says he can relate to the negative experiences described by black activists on many campuses. Although he believes it’s possible for them to have fulfilling experiences at predominantly white institutions, he thinks some students have unrealistic expectations. “Don’t go expecting some kind of Kumbaya campus,” says Mr. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, a historically black institution in New Orleans. “That isn’t there.”

Some demands go beyond the power of even well-intentioned administrators. “You’re trying to change the entire culture of a campus,” he says, “and I don’t think any president or student affairs office can do that.”

Colleges, of course, play a large role in shaping students’ expectations, often touting a commitment to diversity that may not match reality. “They’re presenting themselves as some kind of utopia that doesn’t exist,” Mr. Kimbrough says. “And now students are calling them on it, pushing back against the superficial.”

‘Semantic Substitutes’

Higher education itself is an imperfect laboratory for enacting change. While often seen as liberal enclaves, colleges can have a harder time grappling with racism than they acknowledge, says Shaun R. Harper, executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. The word “racism” is often buried in euphemism, he says. Researchers and campus officials use terms like “alienating,” “hostile,” or “unfriendly” to describe campuses, his research has found.

“The semantic substitutes we’ve embraced make it sting a lot less,” Mr. Harper says, but only for white people. It lets them avoid a sense of discomfort, which is often a necessary part of talking about race. To call a climate “chilly” instead of racist, Mr. Harper says, minimizes the gravity of the problem. It sends the message that solving it is as simple as putting on a sweater.

Some wonder if the scope of the problem is beyond higher education’s capacity to fix. Racism, or “anti-blackness,” has no real solution except its elimination, which is unrealistic, says Mr. Warren, of George Washington University. Racism was written into the U.S. Constitution. It is embedded in environmental policy, real estate, and the economy. “It’s such a juggernaut,” he says. “You can try to negotiate it,” but “you’re not going to get rid of it.”

Colleges reflect and amplify the larger culture, with all its inequities. Higher education may have distinct principles and espouse humanist values, he says, holding fast to the idea that every problem has a solution.

“Universities really want to promote the notion of the student as change agent,” he says. But that can offer them a false sense of their own power.

This week, students at Missouri found such power. They and others on campuses across the country are now coming to grips with the scale of their challenge. Go back a few decades, and racial change in higher education had a different meaning. The task was more fraught, but the goal was also simpler.

In the mid-20th century, black students were fighting to attend public flagship campuses. In 1962, that meant braving armed state troopers and angry mobs, as James Meredith found at the University of Mississippi.

A Different Fight in 1950

Gus T. Ridgel, from Poplar Bluff, Mo., helped to break the racial barrier at the Columbia campus in 1950, and he became its first black student to earn a graduate degree, a master’s in economics. At the time, his presence there was victory enough. Today’s activists draw a direct line from their experience to his, calling their group Concerned Student 1950.

Mr. Ridgel, who is 89, lived through different circumstances. “I didn’t encounter any overt discrimination on campus,” he says. Off-campus was another matter; it was completely off limits to him.

He recalls eating in the dining hall because he wouldn’t be served anywhere else. He slept alone in his two-bed dorm room because no one would share it with him. Asked if he felt isolated, he says he had little opportunity to dwell on it back then. He was speeding through his studies. To save money, he completed his two-year program, including his thesis, in one year. “I knew I didn’t have any time to do any more testing at that time,” Mr. Ridgel says.

Though today’s black students remain small in number relative to the college’s population (8 percent of the student body is black), they are not as alone as Mr. Ridgel was.

But greater visibility and greater numbers come at a cost. Today’s students have cited a series of high-profile incidents in recent months. Passers-by hurled racial invective at the president of the student body, who is black; black students were similarly harassed and demeaned during a rehearsal; feces were smeared in the shape of a swastika in a dormitory. All were followed by what the activists saw as a dismissive response by administrators.

Mr. Ridgel had to fight to be admitted. The problem for today’s students is that after they have gotten in, the discomfort has not ebbed. Overt discrimination may have been eliminated a long time ago, Mr. Ridgel says. But for today’s students, the forces of intimidation and hostility feel no less real.

Dan Berrett writes about teaching, learning, the curriculum, and educational quality. Follow him on Twitter @danberrett, or write to him at dan.berrett@chronicle.com.

Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.