Dear Smith College students, faculty, staff, and fellow alums,
Recently, a White staff member at the College began posting inflammatory videos to a YouTube account, the first of which has amassed––at the time of this writing–– fifty-five thousand views. We have provided a link to a Vimeo here, so as to avoid contributing additional views––and therefore YouTube ad revenue––to the staff member in question. These videos expound at length, though with little actual detail, on various complaints about this staff member’s conditions of employment, largely relating to the College’s recent efforts to implement implicit bias and anti-racist training as a means of embracing equity and inclusion both on and off campus.
As a group of Smith College alums who share these values of equity and inclusion, we feel called to voice our support for the College’s ongoing commitment to anti-racist work. This work has been reaffirmed and refocused in recent months for members of the broader Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC) Smith community, for whom this is only the latest of many well-documented and ongoing instances of racism, silencing, and disenfranchisement. While applicable to the entire Smith Community, this work is of the utmost importance for current students and staff, whose immediate safety and wellbeing during an already difficult semester have been compromised by the overt resentment and ire expressed by this community-facing member of the Smith staff, and by the national attention it has garnered.
We applaud the creation of the employee White Accountability Group, as we recognize the importance of spaces for White staff to learn and address their biases together. We were also gratified to read President McCartney’s October 29th letter, written in response to the aforementioned video, affirming the College’s commitment to racial justice, equity, and inclusion.
Further, we would like to reaffirm our support and offer an additional platform for the list of demands submitted by the Black Student Alliance (BSA), Smith’s African Caribbean Student Association (SACSA), and the Pan African Students Association (PASA) in June:
- Be informed about the multiplicity of voices in the Black community, especially women, LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities.
- Encourage members of the Smith community, including alums, administration, and Board of Trustee members, to contribute financially to organizations that support Black people, including Black Lives Matter.
- Support Black student organizations, seek their input, and increase education about systemic racism for students, staff members, and faculty; and further, listen and build relationships across these communities independent of this work.
- Commit to improved implementation of affinity housing, and increase the resources and space devoted to this much-needed program.
- Incorporate a Race Relations class requirement into the curriculum and expand support for the Africana Studies department, as well as follow through with the College’s promise to “embed education about race and other dimensions of diversity in classes throughout the curriculum.”
- Recognize the ways in which all forms of policing encapsulate White supremacy and Anti-Black violence, and strengthen repercussions for unjustifiable policing against Black students and community members by White and Non-Black POC students, faculty, and staff.
- Hire more Black administration, faculty, and staff and improve retention measures for these staff.
As alums, we also recognize the important role Smith connections continue to play in terms of shared values, mutual support, and lifelong community. We celebrate recent efforts on the part of BIPOC alums and allies to establish clear guidelines and training to support anti-racism in virtual alum spaces, and we implore in-person alum clubs to undertake parallel goals. We also hope the College will see the value of supporting such efforts; that the staff member responsible for this video is also an alum speaks volumes of such a need.
The existence and deleterious effects of White privilege and implicit bias have been well documented and established. That this staff member, despite being employed at a top U.S. college, remains ignorant of such documentation––in service, we presume from her video, of maintaining a guiltless understanding of her own Whiteness––only reinforces the need for ongoing education at Smith. Most of all, White members of the Smith community have a responsibility to our BIPOC sibs to understand the myriad ways systemic racism is braided into the fabric of the institution, and must therefore be eradicated with purpose––not passively permitted to self-replicate.
We believe there is ample work to be done in pursuit of justice, and that it welcomes all hands willing to humbly listen to difficult truths. We believe all Smith community members should strive to be grounded in the realities of the society in which we live. In the face of uncomfortable learning and change, there will always be those whose insecurity manifests as a digging in of heels. It is clear that this staff member, whose video evinces both a staggering lack of self-awareness and a deep preoccupation with disavowing the idea of White privilege, is indeed in need of further training before she can safely interact with students and fellow staff in the course of her employment.
In short: to allow without comment employees of the College to refute the existence of well-documented and widely-acknowledged racial inequity is to continue to perpetuate an environment that is unsafe for BIPOC Smith community members. We can and must do better.
Despite this staff member’s veiled references to co-workers who share her viewpoints, we are confident we stand with a majority of Smith College students, staff, faculty, and alums when we urge the College to continue leaning into the discomfort of growth and making brave decisions to prioritize safety and welcome all students. Whatever future paths we may take as a country and a college community in pursuit of these goals, we believe they will be best steered, not by the relative discomfort of White community members, but by the wisdom of lived experience and the deliberate centering of BIPOC voices who can speak to it.
As a community, we may move forward imperfectly, but we will nevertheless move forward. There is no time to hold back and no time to stand still.
In their June letter, members of the Smith BSA and SACSA (linked above) wrote:
As Black people on this campus, we do not feel heard or understood. We feel betrayed and tokenized. This has been replicated on this campus repeatedly. For example, the racial profiling of a student on campus by an employee. This employee, as well as others, are supposed to be fostering a community of love on this campus which acts as our second home.
We stand by our commitment to seeing Smith become that home for everyone. Thank you for joining us––and for welcoming us to join––in this continued work.
To add your signature (Smith College alums):
To view a list of signatures:
This letter was written collaboratively by members of the Smith alum anti-racism Facebook group “Smithies Show Up (& Do the Work), with editorial guidance provided by Elizabeth Walters ’01, KT Herr ’07, and current Smith student Egypt Ballet ’23
