WASHINGTON — “For people of color, a chilly climate and working at an institution or organization with a history of exclusion all has a negative impact, wherever you are,” Gwendolyn Dungy said, speaking at a networking event for faculty and administrators of color at the Association of American Colleges & Universities’ annual meeting on Thursday.
Dungy, who served as the executive director of NASPA, went on to describe the feeling of isolation that administrators of color may experience when they are the only ones of their race or ethnicity in a committee or in a position of authority at a university or college. Dungy said that it was hard to shake the sensation that, at times, she was being looked at as a “representative” of her race.
It was not a burden that is easily assumed, Dungy noted, but one she took up in part in the hopes of being in a position to help other administrators from a diverse background attain similar leadership roles.
At a panel held later that afternoon, Dr. Mary Hinton, president of the College of Saint Benedict, echoed that sentiment while describing her own prior experiences sitting on committees and meetings. “On the one hand I could go into meetings and be the only person of color, often the only woman of color. So I became a symbol, where whatever I said held true for 12 percent of the population,” she said.
“You could fool yourself into thinking there was some power there, except it is not you, it’s not your voice, it’s not your ideas, it’s what you’re symbolizing in that room,” Hinton added. “So you actually end up with a sense of powerlessness, at the same time that you become a mirror of sorts. People project onto you what they want you to be.”
The afternoon panel, called “Best Practices: Building a Pipeline of Diverse Administrators,” hosted by Diverse and moderated by Executive Editor David Pluviose, looked at some of the reasons why there are so few administrators of color, despite prevalent rhetoric advocating for greater diversity in the field, and what can be done to change the situation.
Dr. Bjong Wolf Yeigh, chancellor of University of Washington-Bothell, described how slow and incremental change can be, by citing the numbers of Asian American presidents. In 1986, only 0.4 percent of all U.S. college and university presidents were of Asian descent. By 2006, that number had “doubled” to 0.9 percent.
