On Wednesday, April 10, classes will be canceled and the campus community will be encouraged to attend “Inclusion in Action: Listening and Organizing Across Difference.” According to a letter sent on Dec. 14, 2018, President McCartney wrote that this conference will be held in place of classes, events and meetings “so that our entire campus community — students, staff and faculty — can join together for immersive learning about inclusion, diversity and equity.” Though not explicitly stated by the administration, “Inclusion in Action” is a response to the incident July 31, in which a campus employee called campus police after seeing a Black student who was simply on a lunch break. This racist act sparked protest and outrage from the student body, culminating in a protest during this year’s Convocation. Instead of directly tackling systemic racism, the administration responded by creating an event to celebrate “diversity” as a nebulous idea that encapsulated race among other identities such as gender, disability and class. They assembled a committee of “diverse” students, faculty and staff (as in, most were not straight, white, able-bodied men) to plan this conference. I was lucky enough to be appointed to this committee, which allowed me to see what the planning process looked like behind closed doors.
It was because of my work with disability activism on campus that I was asked to join the steering committee for the conference. When I arrived, it occurred to me that every member there may be meant to represent a different aspect of “diversity” and/or speak on behalf of a department of the administration. Even after attending almost a dozen meetings over the last two and a half months, I couldn’t exactly tell you what my purpose in this group was. Every Monday, I would go to the Campus Center, eat some lunch from the fancy buffet they provided us and listen to a presentation usually given by the same two people, both of whom were white. They would often ask us to form pairs and discuss our visions for the conference, hitting a xylophone every two minutes to indicate which person could talk. Sometimes we would discuss our thoughts as an entire group, but often they did not significantly affect the structure of the conference. At one meeting, someone finally brought up the elephant in the room — the July 31 incident — and asked why the conference wasn’t addressing it. Many of the committee members agreed that the conference should focus on this key issue, but our discussion did not make a meaningful impact on the planning process. At least from my perspective, I didn’t see any way to make a meaningful impact. Sure, I voted on which corporate title I liked best (after three meetings that included discussions of what the title should be), and I expressed my opinions and concerns for the conference every once in a while, but nothing I did really felt important. However, I am glad that I had this experience so I could see what “Inclusion in Action” is really about.
I don’t believe the organizers leading this conference necessarily have bad intentions, but I do think this conference has been created to be a Band-Aid — not a real solution to injustice on campus. My first suspicion came when I tried to sign up for events. The link to the sign-up page was sent to students March 28, buried inside an email that some students could have mistaken for spam. The link was sent out again April 4 but was still placed in the middle of a paragraph of text. Even after clicking on the link, anyone who wanted to register had to make an account with a separate app. Then, many of the events had limited space, and most of them filled quickly. The head organizers declined to send out another email or make a Facebook event after being requested to do so at the latest meeting.
Though most of the events are the result of hard work and good intentions on the behalf of students, faculty and staff, one event that has caused controversy is “Policing in a Diverse Community.” At 2 p.m. April 10 in the Weinstein Auditorium, campus police will be discussing how to police a diverse college community, and they will be giving an introduction to Daniel Hect. Many students, including myself, are concerned about Hect, the newly appointed chief of campus police at Smith and Mount Holyoke, because of tweets he liked that expressed anti-immigrant, pro-border-wall and pro-Trump sentiments. Committee members expressed concern about this session at the most recent meeting, but the head organizers were reluctant to make any changes — a reluctance that did not surprise me.
I had another suspicion about this conference when the head organizers discouraged media coverage of the event. Only campus media, such as The Sophian, will be allowed to cover the conference, but they will be restricted to reporting only on the opening and closing ceremony. The organizers do not want anyone to report on the presentations to create a safe space for discussion. While I understand the importance of making people feel comfortable when discussing important issues, I do not see why reporting on an event is not allowed if the attendees consent to it. The Sophian intends to live-blog the conference to the best of our ability given these restrictions. Though attendees can fill out evaluation forms after each event and are encouraged to post on social media using #scinclusion, I find it odd that the press cannot publicize the goings-on of this major conference.
After reaching out to student activists and attending months’ worth of committee meetings, I finally realized what the intent of this entire conference comes down to: data. The administration will likely only acknowledge certain issues on campus if there are enough students at events that discuss these issues. They will most likely keep track of how many students attend each event and their responses in the evaluation forms. If they do not get enough data to convince them of certain issues on campus, they may use this as evidence that these issues don’t exist. Though the administration has not explicitly confirmed my suspicions, there is reason to believe they made the process of signing up for events unnecessarily complicated and restricted media coverage so that they would not have to deal with data that proves there are issues on campus that students care about. Therefore, I am encouraging every person in the Smith community to attend as many events as you can and make your voice heard. Support the people who are putting in hard work to make these events possible. Post about the conference using the hashtag to get the administration’s attention. Call attention to issues you feel are not being addressed, such as the hiring of Daniel Hect. If you’d like to get even more involved with social justice issues on campus, reach out to SSJIC (Smith Students for Social Justice and Institutional Change) and be a part of this movement. Now is our time to make this campus truly inclusive for everyone.
