Fairfield University must say Black lives matter
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“As a Jesuit Catholic College, our dialogue welcomes socialists, capitalists, distributed libertarians, anti-racist and anti-anti-racist views, and all factors throughout the spectrum,” stated Mark Nemec, the president of Fairfield College. He was talking at A Group in Motion, an occasion held on Feb. 28 to debate the college’s new range and inclusion efforts.
Throughout the occasion, greater than 100 college students, employees, and school held a silent protest. Members wore all black and held Black Lives Matter flags, and intersectional pleasure flags. A number of protestors additionally held indicators with the hashtag, #nomoreneutrality. As soon as Nemec started talking, protesters knelt and held their flags and indicators greater, forming a rectangle across the perimeter of the occasion corridor as the remainder of the attendees remained standing, sipping from glasses of wine as they blocked the president’s view of protesters. As Nemec spoke, he started to boost his voice at college students and school who silently and peacefully protested.
The assembly got here just some days after a Black Lives Matter flag was faraway from a window of Fairfield College’s Counseling and Psychological Providers (CPS) by the college administration, which advised CPS employees that the flag “might make some folks uncomfortable.” The Fairfield Mirror published a story that same week, exposing the flag’s elimination. The incident prompted a backlash from college students, school and employees, sparking additional dialogue in regards to the lack of assist for Black college students on campus.
On the Group in Motion occasion, Nemec stated that the flag was eliminated principally attributable to a constructing code violation. Nevertheless, he went on to say that, “Workers had been requested and acceded to a request to take away the banner based mostly upon, sure, insurance policies for our public areas…. however most significantly, due to our rules of free expression.”
He went on, “speech, to be free, should be provided within the spirit of dialogue and inquiry. Nameless speech isn’t protected… Neutrality of the college as an establishment arises then not from an absence of braveness, nor out of indifference or insensitivity, it arises out of respect totally free inquiry and the duty to cherish a range of viewpoints.”
The Jesuit order promotes social justice as considered one of its core values. Nevertheless, this Jesuit mission for social justice isn’t exemplified by the college administration by any means. Kris Sealey, Ph.D, the director of the Black Research Division at Fairfield, attended the occasion and protest, and described what she noticed as “past terrible.”
“Fairfield College’s senior administration units the tone on our campus. And the tone is, properly, one which makes the expertise of being a Black scholar on campus remarkably tough,” she stated. “What I heard from him was an inflated dedication to freedom of expression on the expense of the care our college is named to offer for the well-being for individuals who are marginalized on campus. What I heard was, unequivocally, not Jesuit.”
This was removed from the primary time Fairfield College has cited neutrality within the midst of scholar protests. On Nov. 12, 1969, 20 Black college students printed a listing of calls for to fight systemic racism on the college and submitted them to then-President William C. McInnes, S.J. They later occupied Xavier Corridor on campus, refusing to go away even when threatened with forceful elimination by the campus police.
Their calls for weren’t solely affordable however essential to create a secure and welcoming setting for Black college students, school, and employees. The scholars sought to enroll extra Black college students, school, and employees, and set up assist programs for Black college students. Their first demand was that Fairfield ought to improve the variety of Black college students by Sept. 1970 to a complete of 240.
Greater than 50 years later, Fairfield has but to deal with all the calls for. Solely 69 Black college students enrolled at Fairfield as full time undergraduates throughout the 2020-2021 tutorial yr. Lower than 2% of the category of 2025 is Black – simply 12 college students out of 1,256.
Just lately Fairfield has revealed plans for making a separate group faculty in Bridgeport, dubbed Bellarmine Faculty, which, in Nemec’s phrases, would assist college students of shade. “This initiative is designed to enhance upward mobility and profession trajectory for college students not at present served by Fairfield College,” Dr. Nemec stated in his official university statement launched in Oct. of 2021.
However many college students view this as a method for Fairfield to additional exclude and segregate college students of shade. “Is each a kind of college students anticipated to matriculate to Fairfield? Completely not,” he stated on the Group in Motion occasion. Regardless of the Bellarmine Faculty initiative, the college campus inhabitants stays greater than 78% white and there’s no signal of change on the horizon.
On Mar. 2, Stefan M. Bradley, Ph.D, gave a lecture at Fairfield titled, “Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Energy, and the Ivy League in Postwar America.” Earlier than he started, Bradley addressed the current scholar protest and the administration’s elimination of the Black Lives Matter flag. “There isn’t any neutrality on a transferring practice,” he stated, harkening again to Nemec’s name for institutional neutrality. “Black folks battle for freedom wherever Black folks breathe air.”
He known as on college students to spark change at Fairfield after talking about Black scholar activism at Ivy League faculties within the postwar period. “The timing can not get any righter,” he stated.
The college’s stance on institutional neutrality has inhibited the visibility and care of Black college students. Fairfield College should lastly state that Black Lives Matter. Nevertheless, an announcement isn’t sufficient. The college should act, not simply converse empty phrases, to assist Black college students, school, and employees to create a secure and welcoming setting, permitting their voices to be heard and revered. Fairfield College should turn out to be an agent of change.
Danielle Sondgeroth, Aliyah Seenauth, and Kasey Santos are college students at Fairfield College.
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