Faculty and administrators last night packed a Lane Hall classroom for a community discussion designed to address recent safety alerts, sparking a larger conversation about race and diversity issues on campus.
Sponsored by the Office for Campus Life (OCL) and the Group of Six culture centers, the talk's first hour of discussion focused on two security alerts that the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) issued this semester — the first regarding a suspected forcible rape in October and the second concerning a man carrying a ratchet wrench that was mistaken for a gun last Thursday.
The latter half of the discussion centered on the broader issues of race and diversity at Tufts.
"The overriding issue that this community conversation turned up is that those events may have been a trigger … to other thoughts of people being treated differently by their peers and by the institution in general," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said in an interview after the discussion.
Public reactions to the safety alerts have prompted the administration to explore ways to make security alerts less offensive and more informative, Reitman said.
Several TUPD officers also attended the discussion.
Sophomore Daniel Solow said the discussion's emphasis on TUPD's response to the sexual assault and ratchet wrench incidents did not address the students' primary concerns.
"Does anybody in this room have a problem with the security alert?" Solow said. "People aren't upset with TUPD; people aren't concerned about the person that called; people are concerned about the [diversity] climate on this campus."
Associate Professor of Psychology Sam Sommers, who studies the impact of race on perception and behavior, said negative responses to efforts to initiate a dialogue after the ratchet wrench incident confirm that racism exists at Tufts.
"When there's this level of agitation about the conversation being had, it suggests that there's something about the conversation that's true and needed," he said. "A lot of that is the mental defensiveness that we are making when we see these things."
Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education Karen Garrett Gould expressed dissatisfaction that the burden to advocate on diversity issues falls on students, but said that lately some administrators have been listening closely.
"I think that you're right to continue pressing the administration and to hold them accountable," Gould said to attendees. "I think there is a movement on this campus and it's pivotal."
Gould said the administration's unwillingness to tackle race and diversity issues stemmed from an overblown fear of tarnishing the university's image.
"Tufts is a place that is constantly protecting its reputation," she told the Daily. "It doesn't really realize that it actually has an outstanding reputation and that there actually is room for hard conversations to take place."
Tufts Community Union Senator Chartise Clark, a senior, said the administration should take responsibility for tackling race and diversity issues.
"It would be great if we weren't always called on as students to generate action plans," Clark, who is vice president of the Pan-African Alliance, said. "That would be a huge step, and it would take a lot of the onus off of students."
