SAN FRANCISCO — Tikesha Morgan grew curious when she stumbled upon a social media posting by one of her openly gay, Emerson College students who complained about a faculty member’s shabby treatment. Because Morgan knew him well through his leadership of campus organizations, she asked him who the faculty member was.
To her surprise, the individual was a female professor whom Morgan highly respected for organizing English as a Second Language classes for Hispanic employees on campus. While Morgan digested this revelation, the female professor contacted her to complain about the student, unaware of the young man’s complaint on social media.
Immediately, Morgan, who is Emerson’s director of multicultural student affairs and GLBTQ resources, found herself trying to mediate a racially tinged, he-said-she-said disagreement. The professor, who’s White, reported feeling unsafe during a brief talk in her office with the student, who’s Black. The student, meanwhile, said he was dissatisfied with the professor’s lack of response to his repeated requests for assistance. He and the professor both said the student had remained in a waiting area outside the faculty member’s office until she acknowledged him.
“Many times, we are put in the middle of something like this,” Morgan said, referring to employees of color at postsecondary institutions such as herself. “In this instance, I kept asking each of them, ‘Are you sure it’s this person?’ I had never known either one to cause problems for others, so I was taken aback by the whole thing.”
She shared the anecdote last week during the annual, summer institute, “Expanding the Circle: Advancing LGBTQ Initiatives in Higher Education, from the Classroom to the Campus Quad.” Multiple sessions focused on the needs and challenges faced by students who are ethnic minorities and LGBT.
Held at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a stand-alone graduate school that also offers a bachelor’s degree completion program, the conference encourages educators from around the country to share best practices and initiatives across academic and student affairs and across various diversities and disciplines.
