Faculty Officers Statement and Commitments in Response to Racism: A Call to Action

From Jeff Popke, Crystal Chambers, Amanda Klein, and Purificación Martínez

Like many members of our community, the ECU faculty have been grappling with emotions of outrage, revulsion and heartbreak in the wake of the senseless killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others victimized by racism and police brutality in America. We affirm and support those who have responded to these atrocities with long-overdue cries for justice and urgent and nonnegotiable demands for social change. As educators, we are committed to exposing the white supremacy and systemic racial inequality that, for centuries, has bestowed wealth and privilege upon white Americans at the expense of Black and Brown people.

This violent history has left its mark on every American city, including Greenville, NC. We recognize our own history of racial oppression and violence on the campus where we teach, learn, and live.  This legacy dates back to ECU’s founding father, Thomas Jordan Jarvis, an outspoken white supremacist and segregationist who actively campaigned for white supremacy and the disenfranchisement of Black voters. This shameful history continued with the experience of Laurie Marie Leary, the very first black student to officially enroll at ECU in 1963, who suffered bigotry and isolation during her time on campus. Today, Black and Brown students, faculty and staff report racist aggression, macro and micro, across pockets of the university. This is documented across several ECU Faculty Surveys since 2013, including the Harvard COACHE Surveys, ECU Faculty Climate Surveys, the 2019 ECU LGBTQ+ Race/ Ethnicity Survey, and the Faculty Engagement Survey of 2018.

Rather than deal with cultural racism as pervasive across campus, the administration of ECU, like many other universities nationwide, continues to treat racialized incidents individually and not systemically (Cole & Harper, 2017). The university was limited in its response to calls for the deportation of Congresswomen of color as well as verbal attacks against women and people of color by participants in the July 2019 Trump Rally, held in Minges Coliseum.

In light of present social unrest, ECU has shown greater support for the right of individual speech than concern for what for some members of our community experience as a racially hostile environment. Individuals have made public social media posts harassing and threatening our minoritized members of our campus community; however, the university has so far chosen to address these community harms privately. Moreover, all speech at ECU is not treated equally. When the collective ECU Marching Band in consultation with university administration in 2016 demonstrated against police brutality, their voices were silenced as a community and alumni condemned student actions under the guise of patriotism.  Those students who were in their first year in 2016, both in the band and in the broader ECU community, are now seniors. And, much to our shame, we have made little change in policies, practices, or administrative accountability. Shame on us.

ECU’s policy on Non Discrimination states that it is against the policies of East Carolina University to create a hostile environment for an individual or group because of the individual’s age, color, creed, disability, gender, genetic information, national origin, political affiliation, race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran’s status (FM, Part XII.II). As members of the East Carolina University faculty, we are committed to working toward lasting and meaningful change. This means more than simply handing out degrees; we must instill in our students the historical, philosophical and ethical tools to shape a world in which racial justice is the norm, not the exception. In addition, we believe that in order for our students to thrive in a globally intertwined world, it is imperative that they leave from here with the intercultural competence to navigate the world of work today and in the future (Williams, 2013).

We take this charge seriously and therefore offer the following broad initiatives for the 2020-2021 school year:

1. We will form a Senate committee tasked with tracking racial justice and equity issues across campus, particularly with regard to curriculum development. Some examples of initiatives should include, but not be limited to:

• Time and professional development for faculty to create an inclusive curriculum;
• Time and professional development for faculty to learn how to facilitate difficult dialogues including those regarding race and racism;
• Mandatory faculty-led implicit bias workshops at the department; and,
• Implementation of a diversity and inclusion professional development requirement.

2. The Committee on Committees will be tasked with extending opportunities to discuss faculty senate and committee representation by minoritized faculty (with a target of October 2020).

3. ECU must have a stronger investment in the recruitment and retainment of Black and Brown faculty. Collectively we must shoulder the burden of racial justice work and recognize the emotional work performed by minoritized colleagues who are disproportionately asked to serve as racial representatives on committees, and as mentors to peers and our students. Currently, the ratio of Black students to faculty is 1 to 36, not accounting for the disproportionate distribution of these faculty in graduate and professional programs. The number of faculty of color teaching 1000 level courses, to the exclusion of education professionals teaching COAD 1000, can be counted on one’s hands. These are the faculty responsible for inducting new students into our campus and this body of faculty lacks racial and ethnic diversity. There are several units without any Black faculty and few undergraduate alumni who speak to having more than one Black faculty member during their time at ECU. This state of affairs is unacceptable as it is a travesty of learning opportunities. We are depriving our undergraduates across racial groups of the educational experiences and support provided by a diverse and inclusive faculty.

4. We demand that the Office of Faculty Excellence hire a full-time equity and inclusion director of professional development to guide faculty in the implementation of the above goals. This individual must have faculty credentials meeting at the level of tenured associate professor and have expertise concomitant to the role. This must be an institutional priority.

5. We request the provision of resources to the Office for Equity and Diversity (OED) for the support of employee resource groups. This should include an administrative assistant to begin at half time dedicated to scheduling and coordinating faculty and connecting faculty to student groups.

6. We request the dissemination of diversity, equity, and inclusion goals for academic administrators from the department chair level on up. These goals must include accountability measures and specified methods to hold administrators accountable for equity in hiring, faculty turnover, and unit climate. We also request data on faculty employment by race disaggregated by college to be included in the OED annual report. We respect the need for faculty privacy and support the use of * as a symbol to report cell sizes under five.

We are committed to leveraging the Faculty Senate and its Committees, and to working in partnership with the faculty at large, in order to study and adopt these and other concrete policies during AY 2020-21.  We hold ourselves accountable to ensure that faculty, through their teaching, research and service, contribute meaningfully toward the eradication of racism in our campus, our community and our country.

References

Cole, E. R., & Harper, S. R. (2017). Race and rhetoric: An analysis of college presidents’ statements on campus racial incidents. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 10(4), 318–333. https://doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000044

Williams, D. A. (2013). Strategic diversity leadership: Activating change and transformation in higher education. Stylus Publishing, LLC.

To Show Your Support

You are invited to show your support for this statement by adding your name to those of the Faculty Officers. Fill out the form here and your name will be added below. The list will be updated throughout the day. If you experience issues with the form, please contact us.

The following faculty, staff, and students have added their names in support of the statement: