On May 10, President Troy Hammond sent out a campus-wide email announcing the creation of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force following several recent racial bias incidents.
According to the email, these incidents — including the discovery of racist material in the College’s archives and a racial slur written on a resident’s dry erase board — have “lent greater urgency for advancing our diversity, equity and inclusion strategy.”
The Task Force has been a work in progress for several weeks, according to Hammond, who sat down with Chronicle editors on May 9 to discuss the matter. During this meeting, one of the first things Hammond brought attention to was the College’s Strategic Plan, which includes “(working) toward a campus community that is welcoming and supportive of diversity and inclusion (that) is free from discrimination and models civil dialogue on social issues.”
“We’re not there yet by any means, we know that, but it wouldn’t be one of our four Strategic Pillars as a campus community if it wasn’t important and … that’s the Strategic Plan I lead this institution through,” said Hammond.
To move toward meeting this goal, the College has been working with the archivist on a more thorough study of NCC’s archives and working with the Black Student Association to find more effective ways of discussing racial bias incidents with the campus community and to address other areas of concern.
“To be clear, we know we’ve got problems and challenges on the campus … but I am absolutely somebody who wants to be leading the institution from a place of wanting to make this place better,” said Hammond. “We know what we aspire for North Central to be, we spent a lot of time on that.”
Responsibilities of the Task Force outlined in the email include:
The Task Force will be comprised of students, faculty and staff members and work with other campus groups like the Bias Education Team, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Bias Incident Response Team. One of the incidents the College is working toward resolving is regarding the slur left on a student’s dry erase board.
On April 11, the campus community received an email saying that “the ‘n-word’ was written on a dry erase board on the door of a student who identifies as a person of color.” The student, Izaiah Webb, ’20, is now one of the student representatives on the Task Force.
“I wanted to be in this group to be able to represent the minority students at NCC and to make sure the College is implementing effective changes,” said Webb.
Webb’s situation is, according to Hammond, “not over yet” but the College is working to find a satisfactory resolution.
“It’s a horrible thing that happened, I mean it shouldn’t happen. It’s hurtful, it’s painful, I don’t want to see this kind of stuff on campus — nobody does — this is not who we aspire to be,” said Hammond. “Obviously I can’t know the pain he’s experiencing but it makes me angry and upset that it happened and we’re going to continue to do everything we can to make this campus a better place so it doesn’t happen again.”
Webb’s situation is one of several racial bias incidents to happen this term.
“I’m very saddened that some of the things that have happened the last few weeks happened, and I think that we have to take advantage of the situation to make sure that there’s enough energy to make change happen while we can,” said Hammond.
With the introduction of the Task Force, the College aspires to “Thrive as a diverse, inclusive, and globally engaged community…” as stated in the Strategic Plan.
“I hope this group can immediately start to make changes for next year so the next group of first-years coming in can be educated and feel more comfort in this place they can call home in the next four years,” said Webb. “The faster these changes and or additions happen, the better.”
Additional reporting by Maya Bryant
