By Darcy Costello and Zach Melvin
When Allison Peters, a senior government and politics and history major, received an email announcing her acceptance to the President’s Student Advisory Council on Diversity and Inclusion, she said the tone indicated the group would be very important to the University of Maryland’s approach to campus diversity.
“We were given four dates throughout the year: two per semester,” Peters said. “It was like, ‘If you cannot make one of these dates, you cannot be part of the council.'”
Now, at the end of the council’s first academic year, many members said they feel frustrated about the organization’s production and transparency. The lack of a mission statement and concrete definition for the group, as well as an unstable meeting schedule, left its members disappointed with its outcome and hoping for structural changes in the group moving forward.
University President Wallace Loh was unable to attend the last meeting on April 21 as he was called out of town for a funeral. Kumea Shorter-Gooden, the university’s chief diversity officer and associate vice president at the Diversity and Inclusion Office, sat in on the meeting instead.
“We had to clear our schedules for the hour and a half twice a semester, but the meetings have been changed three times,” Peters said. “President Loh wasn’t able to be at the last meeting of the group. … It was because of a funeral, which is regrettable, but it still didn’t leave for the best of discussions.”
Linda Clement, the vice president for student affairs, announced the creation of the advisory board last spring following the March 2015 leak of a racist, sexist email from a former Kappa Sigma fraternity member that was sent in January 2014. In an email sent to the student body, she shared the intention of creating a multicultural student advisory board to counsel Loh on diversity issues.
The board’s 18 student members were announced in October, along with plans for the group to meet twice in the fall and twice in the spring.
Senior sociology major Rhys Hall said he anticipated some legislative power and that there was no introductory email about the intentions of the group from the administration’s perspective.
“I wanted more legislative change, policy-making, more reviewing of the university’s diversity statement — addressing some of the major issues that determine the state of campus,” Hall said. “It appeared as though, at some times, ideas were already in place going into meetings and us council members were being told what was happening.”
In an interview this week, Loh said he saw the body as an informal advisory group designed to provide what he hoped would be a “broader range of perspectives.”
“It was very casual, I’d listen to what they have to say about what some of the issues are on campus and float some ideas by them,” he said. “That was the purpose.”
To Loh, the group was effective in providing “points of view that normally do not come through established channels,” he said. He pointed to their advice regarding the Maryland Dialogues on Diversity and Community, an initiative focused on improving discussions of inclusion and identity, as crucial in shaping the format of the initiative.
But for some members, the Maryland Dialogues initiative highlighted a general lack of transparency and communication between the administrative members of the group and its student body representatives.
Peters explained that the president came to the council with an idea for a diversity day on the campus, where the university would be shut down and each college would be responsible for diversity and inclusion programing related to their respective area of academia.
“Most of us raised our hands in support of that, and that’s what we were told the university was pursuing,” she said. “That was at our Thanksgiving meeting. By the time we got back at the beginning of the spring semester, it was completely changed to the Maryland Dialogues setup. President Loh had been going on with our support, but hadn’t kept us aware of the updates of the program’s format.”
Moving forward, members discussed institutionalizing the body as a permanent president’s council, crafting a mission statement and establishing more transparent practices for both those involved and the general student body.
“We don’t need more events, we need financial support, policies and action,” said Stephanie Cork, a kinesiology graduate assistant. “These offices and these diversity workers already know what is needed, so we need to support them. This needs to be a collaborative bottom-up approach, not top-down.”
Shorter-Gooden said she agreed that the group’s lack of a clear mission led to some “bumpiness” in the council’s first year.
“We got the group together, but didn’t have a crystal clear vision or mandate in mind,” she said. “The good news is that we’ve begun to address those issues.”
Formal agendas were introduced for the spring meetings, giving students a greater opportunity to dictate discussions. In the group’s final meeting on April 21, a subgroup was commissioned to develop a mission statement.
Shorter-Gooden will serve as a co-chair for meetings next year, along with a student co-chair who will be in charge of working an agenda and coordinating with Shorter-Gooden, Loh and Clement to run the meetings.
Sierra Kelley-Chung, a senior individual studies major, said she thinks the main issue is not the campus’ diversity, but rather, its levels of inclusion.
“It’s great to celebrate how diverse our campus is, but the diversity doesn’t matter if we can’t break down the xenophobic barriers and attitudes we have against each other,” she said. “We need more opportunities to foster inclusion, and learn more about each other’s cultures so we can have greater attitudes about other races or cultures or sexualities.”
