Groups find diversity issues difficult to address

Though the University has made great strides in the diversification of the student body in recent years, many students repeatedly express frustration that curriculum and services have not been fully adapted to meet their needs.

A complex web of groups that work on diversity issues exists, but almost all students involved say they are frustrated with the fact that their projects take longer to accomplish than the time they have at Tufts.

These groups _ including the Tufts Community Union Senate's Culture, Ethnicity, and Community Affairs (CECA) committee and the Asian American Curricular Transformation (AACT) project _ wish to tackle issues which span across disciplines or services, making it difficult for students to find the proper administrative point-person.

"Since diversity is such a tough issue, a lot of people who deal with academics don't want to touch it," freshman CECA member Cho Ling said. "It's more abstract than trying to get a water fountain in the cafeteria."

The problem of turnover is one not normally faced by other Senate committees. It takes less than a year to study and change a shuttle route or change the hours of a dining hall. But designing an Asian American Studies minor from a curriculum that lacks classes is a project that some of the students working on it will not see through to completion.

"At times when the main advocates of a cause of issue graduate, that cause gets lost in the shuffle," CECA co-chair Chike Aguh said. "Advocates for any issue pertaining to the community good, especially diversity issues, have to find people to take their place, to continue working on these issues."

But this problem may only be particular to certain issues, said Margery Davies, the Director of Diversity Education and Development.

"There is not one person who thinks it's their responsibility to deal with diversity issues, since everybody wants to deal with diversity issues," she said.

Students working on diversity issues also feel that they have to explain the background of their issues more often than students on Senate committees that lobby for improvements in dining services.

One example is the Latino Curricular Transformation (LCT) Project. Before they can make a proposal or lobby the administration, LCT members say they have to research theories and structures on Latino Studies curricula and must educate administrators on the subject.

"We have to come up with really strategic and innovative plans for every issue," CECA member Julia Karol said, because administrators often are not thoroughly informed.

The list of groups that lobby the administration to deal with diversity issues includes the AACT, LCT, CECA, and the Oversight panel on the Task Force on Race, in addition to the Group of Six culture center directors and the many culture groups on campus.

The lobbying groups all have the same set of goals _ incorporating ethnic studies into the curriculum, improving retention of minority faculty, strengthening and publicizing the bias intervention team, and mandating diversity training for professors and incoming freshmen. CECA's goals, however, extend beyond this list to dealing with other community issues as well.

This list is almost identical to the agenda of a little-known student group called the Coalition. The group, which has no formally stated mission, formed last year after certain events brought "institutional problems regarding diversity to light," according to Aguh.

"The Coalition is a group of students who were tired of seeing these issues mishandled and disregarded," Aguh said. "These students are committed to working for a change."

The Coalition was responsible for making sure diversity concerns were raised at the now-infamous open Trustee meeting last February, according to a viewpoint written by David Wu, and played a role in the AACT project.

This semester, it organized an effort to make students aware of the race and ethnic studies classes offered at Tufts and hosted a panel where professors spoke about the issue two weeks before registration.

The Coalition is comprised of students who wanted to address their own specific concerns independently of existing groups that have definite goals and functions. Though the Coalition's list of issues is in line with similar groups, each group addresses the issues differently.

In addition to the Coalition and CECA, there are the two ad hoc curricular transformation groups, which are comprised of both students and faculty, and the student-faculty Oversight Panel to the Task Force on Race. AACT and LCT are student-faculty committees that exist to serve a specific purpose, and they receive money from the Tufts Diversity Fund to carry out research for their proposals and bring speakers to campus to educate the community. The Oversight Panel deals with many of the same issues as CECA, but focuses more on the faculty perspective.

CECA plays a variety of roles in this structure. The group is both an "advocate and coordinator," Aguh explained. The committee is currently composed of six senators and the four culture representatives, though any student could attend a meeting and serve on the body _ an option that members of groups like Hillel often choose.

When it comes to student lobbying efforts, CECA serves an important role not just as a liaison to the administration but as a clearinghouse of information for community issues.

Several of the group's projects this semester reflect that dual role. Four members of CECA are part of the Bias Intervention team, and one is working to develop a website for program. Other CECA members are currently working on creating a database of administrative, faculty, and student groups that could provide co-sponsorship for campus events, and another wants to take on the development of a webpage detailing Tufts emergency services.

Though the list of groups that work on diversity issues on campus is lengthy, CECA does a great deal to centralize them. A "network of support," according to Karol, is created through regular meetings of the Cultural Coordinating Committee _ a body of representatives from different culture groups _ and by a new Senate bylaw that requires CECA members to attend meetings of these groups.

The diversity issue groups do not always work together, however.

Though AACT has been vocal on campus for quite sometime, it achieved its biggest accomplishment _ the creation of a tenure track position for Asian American Studies in the English Department _ without much help from CECA. CECA has only become truly involved with the project this semester.

The reason for this, according to former CECA chair Pritesh Gandhi, was that the committee did not have enough manpower or support from the Senate executive board to function properly last year.

"As a committee, we never tackled the issue head-on and joined forces with AACT and students associated with that movement," he said. "In retrospect, we probably should have."

This year, however, the LCT is working closely with both CECA and the Senate, as Historian Alison Clarke and Association of Latin American Students Culture Representative Juliana Zapata have brought the issue to body's attention. This is precisely where the importance of culture representatives lies, according to Gandhi, as they can put the weight of the Senate behind an issue.

"If they bring an issue to CECA and to the body, an efficient Senate can take that issue, develop an exploratory committee, develop viable documents to present to the administration, and then demand change," Gandhi said.

Despite the success of ad hoc groups in the last few years, members of CECA see their titles as determining the weight they hold in discussions with the administration. "The administration takes you more seriously when you put TCU Senator as your title," which is a major flaw in the administration, Aguh said. "Any student with a legitimate need or concern should be treated just the same as any other by an administrator."