Racism And Higher Education (fwd)

[SHAWGI TELL <v600a8e6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FYI.


Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
V600A8E6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 10:34:41 -0500
From: Emiliano Zapata <zapata@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Multiple recipients of list MULT-CUL <MULT-CUL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Racism And Higher Education

Maneshkona Shontae Praileau is in Day 50 of a hunger strike against
racism. Here is an important FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 04:37:36 -0800
From: Marpessa Kupendua <nattyreb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: uvmtoday@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Support Committee Response to Salmon Ltr 1/2

H U N G E R   S T R I K E   D A Y   5 0

******************************************************

WRITTEN BY ALANA STUDENT STRIKE SUPPORT
COMMITTEE ON DAY 47 OF HUNGER STRIKE ACTION

The University of Vermont's Official Response to the Hunger
Strike of Maneshkona Shontae Praileau, ALANA Student Leader
at UVM

PART 1
**************
Introduction

Maneshkona Shontae Praileau has called out the University of
Vermont after many months of struggle. At the time of this writing
Maneshkona has entered into the 47th day of a hunger strike in
protest of the University administration's racist practices.  In an
effort  to provide "leadership" the President of the University of
Vermont has responded to the University Board of Trustees with
a communication which states his formal position on the issues
raised by Maneshkona's hunger strike.  Maneshkona is a
Mohegan-African American woman and a student leader at the
University of Vermont. Maneshkona is a Henderson Hall Scholar.

University of Vermont President Thomas Salmon is the former
Governor of the State of Vermont.  He is a political insider in The
Whitest State in the Union. Salmon is a no-nonsense businessman
who sits on the Board of Directors of the Green Mountain Power
Company and is one of the hired muscle behind the use of James
Bay/Hydro-Quebec power in Vermont at the expense of Innu lands
in Canada.

Thomas Salmon made a pledge when he became Interim President
in 1992 at the University of Vermont that he would not "climb any
ladders" with regard to negotiating with ALANA students working
for racial justice on the UVM campus.  That Maneshkona is a
woman of Native ancestry and an ALANA student qualifies her as
somebody to be dismissed out of hand within the moral and
political framework of Vermont's former Governor as he applies
both in his everyday life as the President of Vermont's flagship
institution.

On the 35th day of the hunger strike, President Salmon
communicated the University's formal position to the University
Board of Trustees.  This was the first official response of the
University of Vermont to Maneshkona's demands.  No official
response or effort was made prior to the 35th day to communicate
to Maneshkona the intent which Salmon expressed in his
communication with the Board of Trustees.

Critics of President Salmon indicated that as the Chief Executive
Officer of a university, that the President is responsible for the
welfare of all of the students at the institution and therefore bears
some degree of accountability to them for the direction of the
university on issues which are of particular relevance to their
success.  Critics point out that Salmon has grossly disrespected
Maneshkona in particular and all UVM students in general for his
callous manner displayed in the procedures he chose to follow in
responding to the ALANA student demands. Salmon does not offer
reasoning or justification for his actions.

At no time during the past 47 days has President Salmon initiated
any discussion with Maneshkona on his own accord. Intermediaries
have made efforts to arrange meetings which have been
orchestrated without consulting Maneshkona directly, nor in a
manner that is consistent with her wished that the ALANA student
leadership be present for said meetings. University officials have
claimed credit for communicating with Maneshkona when such
claims are based in fact on second and third party hearsay garnered
by line staff and student employees. At the present time, the entire
University administration, including Provost Robert Low, the
Provost Council of Deans, the Vice President of Student Affairs
Dean Batt, the Interim Director of the Office of Multicultural
Affairs Douglas Samuels, Director of Residential Life Jill
Carnaghi, and the Director of Police Services David Richards are
entirely without working knowledge or strategic intelligence
concerning the details of the ongoing strike and the status of the
hunger striking Maneshkona.

The Chief Executive Officer of the University of Vermont has
made a formal policy statement to the University Board of Trustees
without the benefit of sitting down with Maneshkona to initiate
even the first discussion with her.  There was no attempt to even
gain a better understanding of what Maneshkona is doing, why she
is doing it, nor to understand and clarify  the demands before he
categorically dismissed them out of hand.

******************************************************

An Analysis of President Salmon's Memorandum
to the University of Vermont Board of Trustees     PART 1

January 4, 1996

To:     The UVM Board of Trustees
From:   Thomas, P. Salmon, President
Re:     Shontae Praileau's Fast

Salmon (S)  :   "UVM student Shontae Praileau has publicly stated
that she would continue her fast until certain demands are met."

ALANA Student Strike Support Committee (SSC):
Salmon labels the student protest action a "fast".  This mollifies
the readers with softening language. A fast is different from a
hunger strike.  A hunger strike is an extreme act of resistance
which goes beyond the moral statement of fasting. A hunger strike
deprives the striker of all solid foods indefinitely. Fasting is a
milder, though morally powerful undertaking.

Salmon's intentional mislabeling is in direct disrespect to the action
of an ALANA student leader.  It is consistent with the fact that the
Board of Trustees was aware of the hunger strike and made not
one public comment to address it.  What is more, the Board of
Trustees is in direct management, via its Ad Hoc Diversity
Oversight Committee, of all ALANA student recruitment and
retention planning that is presently underway at the executive level
of the University.  That committee was authorized by the Board of
Trustees in April of 1995 and is under the chairmanship of
Trustee Richard Dennis, AT&T Corporation in New Jersey, and
African American alumni of UVM.

Salmon (S):
"Those demands include changing certain personnel decisions to
her specifications,"

SSC:
Salmon misrepresents Maneshkona's position to the Board of
Trustees.  Maneshkona presented demands which were in accord
with the wishes of a group of veteran ALANA student leaders who
have been involved in the due processes of university politics,
committees, and commissions since the 1991 Waterman Takeover.

The issues which Maneshkona addressed in the negotiating points
of her statement were concerning modification of the appointment
of Douglas Samuels, who was made Interim Director of
Multicultural Affairs in November of 1995 without consulting the
ALANA student leadership (a customary practice of University
hiring officials in student service areas campus wide).

The ALANA students stated through Maneshkona that the Interim
Director be replace by acting Multicultural Affairs Academic
Support Coordinator Dr. Lufuno Tshikororo, a trained
psychologist with more direct agency experience and student
service expertise than Samuels.  The compromise position asserted
in Maneshkona's statement was to appoint co-directors if it was not
an option to outright replace Mr. Samuels.

Since his appointment Mr. Samuels has been hostile toward
ALANA student leaders who are in their senior year and has made
derogatory comments re Maneshkona's indigenous heritage.  The
Multicultural Affairs staff, constituted of African American and
African women, have taken issue with Mr. Samuel's habitual
sexist behaviour in executing his management responsibilities.  A
sexual harassment grievance is expected to be filed against both
Samuels and his supervisor, Vice President for Student Affairs
Dean Batt, who was made aware of Samuels' difficulties in
supervising his female staff judiciously.  ALANA students have
also documented Samuels' use of private and public resources to
gain favor with other ALANA students, such as funding special
projects or making rented vehicles available to students for
non-university business purposes.

SALMON:
"reinstating the Commission for Racial Justice and Multicultural
Education with its former membership, delegating the primary
authority for hiring the next Director of the Office of Multicultural
Affairs to a small group of self-selected students,"

SSC:
The ALANA students are not asking for the delegation of "primary
hiring authority".  Salmon is misrepresenting and overstating the
specified demand.  The ALANA students are asking to have a
51% representational presence on the search committee which
makes the final hiring *recommendation* to the official hiring
authority for all employment concerns in the Division of Student
Affairs, Vice President Dean Batt.

By misrepresenting the demand as such Salmon places the ALANA
student position in a false light making it appear extreme and at
odds with University procedures. This is clearly not a demand that
is asking for anything more than adequate ALANA student
representation within the framework of standard University
selection procedures.

At present, this demand by ALANA students can be contrasted
with the current efforts of Interim Director of the Office of
Multicultural Affairs Douglas Samuels in building the Search
Committee, under the auspices of Vice President for Student
Affairs Dean Batt.  Mr. Samuels is selecting members of the
Search Committee  without formally declaring his intentions as a
prospective applicant for the position. In the meantime,
Samuels has engaged in wholesale discrediting of Maneshkona and
other ALANA student leaders who are elected by a majority of
their peers in University recognized student organizations. Where
is the "self-selecting" going on and under whose auspices is it
being carried out?

President Salmon is advised on these matters by Provost Low and
Vice President Batt. The activities of the Interim Office of
Multicultural Affairs Director Samuels are carried out under orders
from Vice President Batt.  President Salmon is not clear in his
understanding of Maneshkona's platform of demands which
suggests difficulties within his chain of command which is
deployed to cooperate with students on campus.  Does President
Salmon have the proper executive control of the situation where
a student protest has reached life and death levels of engagement?
And if the President does not, what could be said of the University
Board of Trustees?

SALMON:
"...and creating a separate "Bill of Rights" for ALANA students.
(See attached statement)."

SSC:
There is a recent history to the ALANA Student Bill of Rights
which is illustrative of Salmon's mishandling of this entire issue.
Also implicated in this history is Dean of Arts and Sciences Joan
Smith, and Provost Robert Low.  Following the extreme action of
terminating with cause of a leading member of the UVM ALANA
community, an outspoken person advocating for ALANA students'
rights and racial justice, the ALANA student leadership drafted a
set of rights which they brought forth to the President in a good
faith effort to negotiate.. Low and Smith were present at the
meetings where the President aborted execution of his
responsibilities to work with ALANA student leaders in good faith.
Now that the Rights have been brought back to the table, Salmon
uses the extreme circumstances of Maneshkona's hunger strike to
dismiss these Rights out of hand.  The tactic is rather transparent
and very well used in administration-ALANA student relations:
meet with the students and frustrate them with footdragging,
provoke them into a reaction, and dismiss the demands based on
the reaction.

SALMON:
"Certain aspects of Ms. Praileau's statement suggest the adoption
of a separatist philosophy I will never endorse as we move forward
on these issues."

SSC:
This passage is extremely vague and highly misleading.  It is
vague in what specific demands Maneshkona makes which Salmon
arbitrarily classifies as "separatist".  A context for using this word
is absent altogether.  In contrast to what a leading African
American scholar has said recently about Maneshkona's messages
and statements throughout the hunger strike, that Maneshkona's
words bear many "uncanny parallels" to Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.'s "Letter from A Birmingham Jail,  President Salmon seems to
slight Maneshkona's mission yet again to the Board of Trustees as
some kind of sophomoric and misguided action completely outside
the realm of possible compromise.

The President's assertions are misleading here in that he suggests
that there has been progress made on his own agenda for "cultural
diversity".  The public record is already holding numerous
citations of the many missed deadlines, botched programs, and
administrative "controversies" where executive staff have
corrupted university staff, student, and faculty led processes which
were originally agreed to by the President as central to the cause
at hand.

A UVM ALANA alumni observed recently:
"This needs to be explained, justified and qualified.  No where in
Shontae's statements does she say she has adopted a separatist
philosophy, Slamon has assigned this to her, a racist act in itself.
What is his "separatist philosophy" statement based on?  What
research?  What authors or scholars?  This is just a label, a
category he does not understand, but will not hesitate to use to
 marginalized an activist student."

The President contradicts his decision to exclude ALANA students
from the selection process for the last two Interim Directors of the
Office of Multicultural Affairs, from the appointments made to the
Diversity Advisory Board which replaced the disbanded
Commission on Racial Equality and Multicultural Education.
These are examples of recent decisions which have demonstrated
Salmon's exclusionary preferences re ALANA student voices.  Is
this President Salmon's "separatist" philosophy in action?

SALMON:
"Our goal must be one of inclusion and community building, not
one of further fragmentation."

Who does President Salmon include in the term "Our"?  Whose
voice is a part of the process and who is ignored or forced out of
the process?  The active and involved leadership among the
ALANA student community has been clear that it differs in what
it sees the goals to be for the community building process.  The
former administrative staff director at the Office of Multicultural
Affairs had organized a productive working relationship with the
elected ALANA student leadership in order to incorporate the
ALANA student voices into the community building process.
Then Director Chavez was terminated because of the ALANA
students' increasing effectiveness in influencing the agenda and the
goal setting process. The ALANA student leadership has been
castigated as a group of people who were part of a "cult" (as per
Vice President Dean Batt of Student Affairs in his comments to
employees of theUniversity of Vermont) and that they had been
"brainwashed" (Interim Director Samuels to employees of the
University of Vermont.

What does President Salmon mean by inclusion? Is this the same
coded racist terminology for "melting pot theory" or
"assimilation"?  Who is to be included and who is to be excluded?
Which ideologies are acceptable to the white majority President
Salmon seems to pander toward and which ones will be penalized,
banished, discredited as products of "cults", or demonized as
"brainwashed" by his white male lieutenants?

In his "inclusion" model, how does the President articulate a
rationale for destroying a generation of ALANA student leadership
predicated on the campus experience of the 1991 Takeover, a
destruction which sets the campus back nearly 25 years in its
evolution and development on issues of racial equity and justice?
How does the President acknowledge that a part of the larger
community has been dismantled, threatened, and ignored?

The President speaks of forward movement on "these issues".
President Salmon does not speak of the same issues as
Maneshkona, issues of racial justice and equity, ending the
marginalization of ALANA students at the University of Vermont,
and healing the current systematic destruction at the direction of
Vice President for Student Affairs Dean Batt of the ALANA
student community which represents students of color who identify
as people of color.

Forward movement on President Salmon's highly touted Diversity
Initiatives has been neither forward nor any semblance of
movement since these were hastily announced in April of 1995.

President Salmon speaks of a direction that is  "not one of further
fragmentation . . . " Isn't the conceptual form of "fragmentation"
accepted at the university? The campus is divided among three
campus areas. Why are there separate study facilities designated
for Graduate students in the library?  Why is Redstone campus
residence halls reserved for only 2nd year students?  Is there not
a S.A.F.E. house on campus?  It is clear that fragmentation is a
campus norm.

SALMON:
" UVM strongly supports cultural pluralism and equality, as
reflected by our extensive rage of ongoing programs, policies, and
initiatives and the clear commitment of so many members of our
community."

SSC:
The long and unflattering history of institutionalized racism of
previous and current UVM administrations is well documented
since the founding of the University.  There are literally pounds of
planning documents prepared by hundreds of committees and
commissions which have not seen the light of day over the past 25
years.

The institution is presently without a recruitment plan. Following
the destruction of the first African American centered recruitment
campaign in 1995, coordinated by the Office of Multicultural
Affairs and the New Black Leaders, with support of the Asian
American Student Union, and the Alianza Latina the University is
completely without a competitive strategy for marketing the
institution to African American, Latino, Asian, or Native
American students.

Following the termination of the previous Director of the Office of
Multicultural Affairs in 1995, the chief academic advisors are
without an ALANA centered retention program which was
scheduled for implementation this January of 1996.  There are no
academic advisors in each academic college who are people of
color.  The University is not competitive in this area.

The newly created ALANA Studies Program is underfunded and
in jeopardy given the University's present budget deficit projection
of two to four million dollars.  Financial aid deficits of over 10
million dollars for next fiscal year threaten ALANA student
recruitment and retention even further.

The Salmon Diversity Initiative is still born due to the dearth of
expertise on campus necessary to design the requisite student
support services necessary to compete in today's sophisticated
multi-racial educational environment.

The Office of Multicultural Affairs has been systematically
disemboweled and this has dispersed the concentration of energy
and experience that was challenging the University colleges to
move in a progressive and racially equitable direction.  The public
is invited to solicit feedback from the leadership of the School of
Natural Resources and the College of Agriculture for a sense of
how those colleges were making effective change in their domains
by working in collaboration with the former Director and the staff
of the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

The decommissioned Commission is responsible for the majority
of the present anti-racism training and education initiatives
presently funded and many of the other ongoing programs referred
to vaguely by the President.

END PART 1.......



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