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Because we are observing
Otelia Cromwell Day this week, I thought it an appropriate
occasion to tell you about the progress that we are making
on diversity initiatives. As I said at Convocation, and as
I continue to say each time that I address Smith audiences
on campus and off, diversity is one of my main priorities.
I would like Smith to have a faculty, a student body, and
a staff even more diverse than they are, and I would like
to see more attention to the experience of under-represented
minorities in the curriculum. I want to make Smith a model
of a culture that values diversity and respects it in all
of its forms.
Smith confronts some
challenges in regard to diversity: the high cost of its tuition;
the relative absence of racial diversity in Northampton and
the surrounding area; the lack at Smith of an urban model
of diversity, in which many cultures continually interact,
without the felt need to become a single community. Smith
also has great strengths upon which it can build in pursuing
its ideal: its history of reaching out to international students
and faculty, particularly in times of international tension
like the 1930s; its strong support, dating from the early
1960s, of programs to recruit African-American students;
the strength and visibility of the lesbian community on campus
and in the city of Northampton; its active recruitment of
faculty, students, and staff of color; its commitment to
meet students' full financial need; and the seriousness with
which the college as a whole takes up community issues, like
those raised by the grass roots movement this spring.
In providing a report
on our progress on diversity at Smith, let me first address
the agreements reached by students and administration this
past spring. All of those initiatives are well under way,
with the exception of the review of Judicial Board procedures.
Because we are in the final stages of hiring a general counsel
for the campus, I thought it would be wise to wait to initiate
this review until spring, when the counsel will be able to
assist us. All other programs are in place or under active
development. For example, we have added material on race
and oppression to orientation and to pre-orientation; ongoing
training of residential life staff has begun; we have linked
diversity programming more closely to the residential life
system; we have increased compensation for Residence Coordinators;
we have provided additional structural support for the Office
for Institutional Diversity; and the year-long lecture series, "Race
Matters," has gotten off to a very strong start. A detailed
report on progress in implementing the agreement can be found
on the College website at www.smith.edu/repair/initiatives.html.
I am grateful for the work of Senior Staff, and particularly
Brenda Allen, on these initiatives; our progress owes much
to their energy and dedication.
The faculty also have
devoted significant energy this summer and fall to considering
how best to bring more attention to American ethnicities
into the curriculum and to provide forums in which faculty
can learn about dealing with issues of diversity in the classroom.
The Committee on Academic Priorities has proposed three initiatives
to achieve these goals: a series of pedagogical workshops
that will address the challenges of dealing with issues of
race, class, and discrimination in classroom discussions
and exchanges; a program to broaden coverage of issues of
cultural diversity, race, class, gender, and sexual orientation
in gateway and introductory courses; and a set of summer
seminars for faculty designed to develop 24 new courses that
focus upon race and ethnicity in American culture. The series
of pedagogical workshops are already under way; the program
addressing introductory courses will begin this fall; and
the first of the faculty seminars will occur this summer.
In regard to admissions,
I am very happy to report that the number of applications
from under-represented minorities is already significantly
ahead of the last two years. This, of course, is early in
the admissions season, but we already have over twice the
number of applications from African American students than
we did at this point in 2000 and 2001; and an increase of
72 percent in applications from under-represented minorities
overall in comparison to 2000 and 58 percent in comparison
to 2001. We had a very successful fly-in program, designed
to recruit under-represented minorities the weekend of October
26; we had 1,100 applications for 65 places. We are now planning
a phonathon to contact those students that we could not fly
to campus.
When I arrived on campus
in June, one of the first documents to come to my desk was
a recommendation from Staff Council for mandatory diversity
training for all employees. I appointed a small committee
to develop a proposal; it was presented to the group of senior
managers earlier this fall. The committee recommended that,
in addition to the diversity training required for all new
employees, each staff member, in consultation with his/her
supervisor, develop an annual program, made up of classes,
lectures, or other activities, designed to increase knowledge
of other cultures and sensitivity to diversity issues in
the workplace. The committee felt that such individually
designed programs would be more effective than a single mandatory
curriculum because they would involve annual conversations
between employees and their supervisors about diversity education
and because they would recognize the variety of ways in which
we learn and the different stages of our knowledge. The Staff
Council also recommended that performance evaluation include
attention to diversity issues.
I would like to close
this letter by speaking specifically about the threats that
xenophobia poses to diversity. Some Americans have responded
to the terrorist attacks of September 11th and subsequent
world events with hateful characterizations of some foreign
populations in the United States and by calls for restrictions
upon international students and faculty. It is hard for those
of us who enjoy the security of citizenship to imagine how
vulnerable and threatened citizens of other countries can
feel in the face of such abhorrent language. It is important
for all of us to speak out against such prejudice and to
assure that international faculty and students know that
we value what they bring to our community.
I look forward to the
discussions with which we will mark this Otelia Cromwell
Day. One of my wisest mentors counseled me to make sure to
distinguish problems that have a single solution from those
that the community continually engages. Diversity is a problem
of the second sort and not the first. Only by our continual
engagement with the issue in all its many forms will we approach
the ideal we hold before us of a community that not only
respects diversity in all its forms but sees it as essential
to its excellence.
Carol Christ
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