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Underrepresented Students of Color Detail Experiences at Andover at Faculty Meeting

Eight students spoke at Monday’s Faculty Meeting to share their experiences of being an underrepresented student of color on the Andover campus, in Kemper Auditorium. The faculty later discussed the issues addressed after the students had left. Jason Young ’15, Jair Kornegay ’15, Janine Ko ’14, Katherine Vega ’14, Sydni White ’14, Kai Kornegay ’14, Devontae Freeland ’15 and Zainab Aina ’14 led the discussion. “The goal was to make sure that faculty knew about the experiences of underrepresented students of color. We wanted to bring to light something that might have gone unnoticed by the faculty but affects many of us,” said David Gutierrez ’15, 2014-2015 Student Body Co-President, who introduced the speakers at the meeting. “I hope that people took away from this that more racial awareness needs to be brought in this campus and when we do talk about race it should be in a productive and respectful manner,” said Gutierrez. The faculty remained in the auditorium after the presenters had left to further discuss the information and come up with means by which faculty could support the movement, which the students were hoping to achieve through their presentation. “The stories were all really powerful, and they were all addressing different things: from things explicit, like the casual use of the n-word, which actually cannot be used casually, or the clearly violent use of the word directed towards a particular black student, to things more implicit, like the ease at which a teacher’s acts in the classroom can inadvertently reinforce stereotype threats,” said David Fox, Instructor in English. “At one moment, after the students left, a veteran faculty member said, ‘On this stage, I remember when James Merideth was here and said, “I would have rather faced the racism I did in Mississippi than the racism my sons face here at Andover.”’ There was a lot of silence [after that] and we were invited to do so and process what we heard. After the faculty member shared that, there was a significant two, three, four minute silence,” said Fox. The students chose to address the faculty in person to express individual accounts and experiences of discrimination on campus. “By physically speaking in front of the faculty, we added an element of personality to it. With the original letter to the editor that the students wrote, that sparked More Than Just A Number and this conversation, it’s very easy to assume that it was the voice of all black students and all Latino students, but there was no personality to it no individuality,” said Devontae Freeland ‘15, one of the students involved in organizing the meeting. “One criticism I have of this institution is that it doesn’t have much of a focus; there are too many different things, and they are all put on equal standing, and so if this is important and we want to maintain momentum, then we need to make it a priority,” said Fox.