BACKGROUND The College has a stated commitment to diversifying the staff, student, and faculty community. The College’s and the President’s Statement on Diversity can be downloaded/viewed here. Our view of “diversity” includes a diversity of: race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, class background, ability, state/ country of origin, religion, and opinion.
Quick History
A quick history of activism at Grinnell leading up to this demand.
STUDENT DIVERSITY
- The College’s most recent published diversity statistics: 2007 Grinnell College Report on Admission
- The percentage of the student body composed of African-American students has not changed dramatically since 1971 when black students took over Burling Library with a list of demands called the 1971 Black Manifesto. One of their demands was a dramatic increase in the number of black students on this campus. A 2003 study published in The Journal for Blacks in Higher Education, after employing “13 widely accepted quantitative measures of institutional racial integration,” the study identified Grinnell as the worst elite small college in the country for blacks. Administrators made no public response to that rating despite the fact that it was made by a credible peer-reviewed journal on issues of diversity. The Office of Admissions argues that progress has been made in increasing the black community at Grinnell. Here, an S&B reporter shows that little real progress has been made.
- Another concern within the realm of student diversity is the issue of religious and spiritual diversity. If the College is committed to bringing students from diverse religious backgrounds to this college, and supposedly making them feel welcome, why is the college planning to not hire a full Lily Intern for next year?
- International Students, unlike domestic students, do not currently have need-blind admissions or their full financial need met. These policies hurt international low-income students. A student initiative to implement both of these policies was passed by 83% in the Fall of 2007. This proposal was also presented to the Trustees in the winter of 2008.
STAFF DIVERSITY
- There are only 3 domestic staff-persons of color in Student Affairs and there are no Asian-American Student Affairs staff-persons although the Asian-American population is our highest population of students of color on campus.
- Students’ experiences at this College are affected by the lack of staff diversity. Minority students should have the same right that majority students do to staff who share an understanding of their experiences.
FACULTY DIVERSITY
- There are only 12 tenured faculty of color on this campus (cited by Faculty Letter).
- Following a series of previous reports and proposals on faculty diversity over several years (see quick history), a group of Grinnell professors that are experts in the areas of workplace and academic diversity wrote a comprehensive document in 2008 about the state of faculty diversity at Grinnell College today and the steps the College should take to rectify the situation. In this document, the group of professors find that, in general, the College does well (compared to its peer institutions) at recruiting and hiring faculty of color. Where the college is failing is at RETAINING faculty of color. They provide clear steps that the College should take to better recruit, retain, support, and promote faculty of color. We suggest that the administration follow the recommendations of this document closely in its planning.
- High turn-over and low retention of faculty of color is a problem for the entire community. The ways in which faculty of color are hurt by this dynamic are clear. As students, we also suffer from this high turnover. Our learning experience inside and outside the classroom is greatly damaged by the limited availability of role models of color and the limited range of diversity of experience of our professors. While we hold the administration accountable for incentivizing, supporting, and enforcing the work that must be done to change this trend, we also recognize our role as students in increasing our retention rates of faculty of color. As students, we are responsible for not only demanding support for faculty of color from the administration and other faculty, but we are also responsible for changing our own treatment of these faculty. We must acknowledge the ways in which we have internalized oppressive ideologies of education. We must acknowledge that we tend to give women faculty and faculty of color worse end of semester evaluation forms. We must recognize the ways that we are unsupportive of new faculty of color. And we must educate ourselves in order to change these behaviors. Administrative changes will be meaningless unless we too do our share of the work.
OUR DEMANDS: We demand the implementation of policies and programs to increase the number of faculty of color at the College, including (1) an independent, external review of retention of faculty of color at the College to be convened by May 4th, 2009; the reviewers will also (2) publish and disseminate a written plan to increase retention, as well as recruitment, support, and promotion of faculty of color by October 26th, 2009. We demand an expansion of diversity and intercultural programming, to include the formation a fully-staffed and funded Office for Campus-Wide Diversity. Plans for the funding of the Office for Campus-Wide Diversity must be finalized by April 20th, 2009 and approved at the meeting of the Board of Trustees the weekend of April 23rd, 2009. We demand the reversal of admission policies that disadvantage low-income international students in the admissions process, including a return to need-blind admissions policies and a guarantee to meet the full financial need of international students. This policy must be adopted at the meeting of the Board of Trustees the weekend of April 23rd, 2009.
