SAN FRANCISCO — The Black student protests last year at the University of Missouri which prompted both System President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin to step down reverberated in subsequent student protests around the country. Handling such unrest among underrepresented students was a hot topic of discussion at the 98th American Council on Education Annual Meeting which concludes today.
The climate of unrest among students at numerous campuses has caused some presidents to be “so worried that they’re going to say something wrong that it has almost paralyzed them,” said Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan, president of St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “Many of them are now just hiring armies of people that script almost everything they say because they just don’t want to put anything out there and be held liable for it.”
Jordan served as a panelist for an ACE session entitled, “Black Lives Matter: What Does the Higher Education Community Mean for the Movement?”
However, Dr. G.P. (Bud) Peterson, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, noted that much can be accomplished just by talking with underrepresented students. During an ACE session titled, “Decisive Leadership at the Crossroads of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” Peterson said that Georgia Tech is making deposits in the “bank of goodwill” with various groups of underrepresented students “because we talk and communicate and explore and discuss when times are good.” Thus, there is money in the bank when a time of crisis prompts a withdrawal.
Thus, Peterson notes that Georgia Tech has good relations with its LGBT, Black and Hispanic communities. But, he says that the relationship with Muslim students is “not as strong as I’d like,” yet he has been working to improve that relationship.
Alluding to rhetoric in the political arena that calls for bombing wide swaths of land where large numbers of Muslim peoples dwell, Peterson said he used that opportunity to engage with that community at Georgia Tech.
“Some of these students and some of the faculty, they’ve got to be feeling oppressed when they watch television” and come away with the impression that someone is “going to kill their families.
“We just met and had a conversation;” asking members of Georgia Tech’s Muslim community, “Tell me about your experiences? What’s your experience like at Georgia Tech?”
