Sunday, April 11, 2010 — Page 1A
WAGNER COLLEGE PROTESTERS RETURN TO FIND LITTLE HAS CHANGED
There is just one black full-time faculty member at Wagner. And just 5 percent of Wagner’s student body is black;
40 years ago, when students protested the disparity, blacks at the school numbered 3 percent.
By JUDY L. RANDALL
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Forty years ago, on Wagner College’s leafy Grymes Hill campus, the demands were revolutionary.
Among them: Calls for at least one full-time black instructor in every department, more black studies courses and a full-time black recruiter to attract more black students.
Days of campus unrest followed in April 1970, including a two-day peaceful occupation of Cunard Hall by a group of activists called Black Concern. Eventually, many of the students’ demands were agreed to, but not before they were falsely accused of holding a dean hostage, falsely blamed for being behind another disruption that was led by white students and temporarily expelled.
Yesterday, more than a dozen of those students returned to campus to attend a symposium on their activism and to set the record straight about their intent.
Yet when it comes to the numbers, little appears to have changed at Wagner.
- There is just one black full-time faculty member on the college’s roster, an untenured history professor. [True: Dr. Rita Reynolds was hired in the summer of 2008 as a visiting professor in the History Department. This spring, her position was switched to the tenure track. The writer did not report, however, that, out of 98 full-time faculty members, 4 are Hispanic or Latino, and 8 are Asian. More than 13 percent of the college’s full-time faculty members come from minority communities. The reporter asked about faculty composition on Wednesday, April 7, and was informed of these figures that afternoon.]
- And just 5 percent of Wagner’s student body is black; 40 years ago it was 3 percent. [The writer was provided on Tuesday, April 6 with figures from the 2009-10 Common Data Set showing the racial/ethnic breakdown of the current student enrollment. On April 7, the writer was given the following analysis of those figures: “In the spring of 1970, Wagner College had about 100 black students out of a total of around 3,000 undergraduates — or about 3 %. And the number of Hispanic students in 1970 was truly tiny; Alma, the Puerto Rican student association, had just 13 members, comprising less than half a percent of the total enrollment. But 40 years later, in 2010, Wagner College has a much, much stronger minority student population, comprising about 15% of the population of undergraduates whose race/ethnicity are known. We have made progress, and we're very proud of it.”]
- Nor is there a black studies program, although a college spokesman said an array of courses in various departments touch on the black experience. [In response to a question about whether Wagner College has a black studies program, the writer was told on Friday morning, April 9, “No, we do not have a Black Studies program, as such. We have incorporated a much broader approach to American diversity into our curriculum that includes, at last count, 28 courses from a dozen different disciplines.” The writer was not told about the college’s old Black/African Studies program, which operated from 1972 through 1980.]
- “There has never been a tenured black professor at Wagner before there was a black president of the United States,” said symposium panelist Dr. Milfred Fierce, a Wagner graduate who served on the college’s board of trustees. [The writer appears to have deliberately ignored the comments of the two speakers who immediately followed this remark from Milfred Fierce. Professor Robert Anderson noted that he had hired Wellington Nyangoni (for the Black Studies program) for a tenure-track position; Nyangoni served from 1972 until 1976, when he was hired away by Brandeis, where he currently teaches. Professor Amy Eshleman also recalled Anthony Carter, who held a tenure-track position in the business department from 1998 to 2003. Both Anderson and Eshleman said that Nyangoni and Carter would almost certainly been given tenure had they stayed at Wagner.]
Fierce, himself a retired college professor, said black academics “can be found if the effort and commitment is there” and said Wagner “needs to be competitive” in luring and retaining black tenure-track professors.
SEE THE CHANGES AT WAGNER
Wagner Provost Devorah Lieberman said Wagner College casts a wide net when hiring faculty to “find the best people possible.” She said discussions about diversity is “a conversation that can’t end.”
Wagner’s dean of college life, Ruta Shah-Gordon, called the quest for more black faculty and students “a work in progress” and noted a “diversity action council” was formed two years ago, in part toward that end. Still, she conceded, “I know you began the conversation a long time ago.”
- Another panelist, Ret. U.S. Army Col. Sharon Richie-Melvan, was Wagner’s first black homecoming queen. Despite that she said she experienced “racism” while at the school and moved off-campus after the days of unrest. “I walked away from here with a broken heart,” she said, likening it to post-traumatic stress. “We need to go back to our original plan, to make this college open to those who are eligible.” [The quotation in this paragraph was not continuous. Between these two remarks, Sharon Richie-Melvan said this: “But I have also realized in the last 48 hours, from information I have been given and documents I have read and people I have talked to, [that] I didn’t have all the facts. It [the occupation of Dean Harold Haas’s office] didn’t need to happen. Where I see the blockage is a lack of communication, and those blocks in communication that I saw back then I have carried for 40 years, and it was not necessary. And I am hoping that from today we are going to move forward and put the information on the line and go back to our original plan, which was to make this campus open to everyone who is eligible.” The next day, Richie-Melvan said that the reporter had quoted her out of context, and had deliberately fished for angry remarks from the panelists and guests with whom she spoke after the program had concluded. Richie-Melvan said that she felt like the program on Saturday was a new beginning, a reunion of the Wagner family and an opportunity for a new start. To see a short video recorded by Sharon Richie-Melvan the day after the symposium, visit our YouTube channel, WagnerCollegeNYC.
“Clearly nothing has changed,” said Marilyn Jackson of Willowbrook, who participated in the long-ago demonstration and attended the symposium, when she learned there is only one black professor at Wagner. “I guess I am not surprised, but I am disappointed.”
“It hurts, with all the sacrifice we made and what we were exposed to,” said another student from that time, Pat Allen Long of Elm Park.
But Toni King Whitlock said she didn’t think her activism, and that of her fellow students, had been in vain.
“It is important to make the point even if you don’t get the response you want,” said Mrs. Whitlock.
About 65 people attended the symposium in Spiro Hall, including faculty, students and relatives of the former activists.
Acting Supreme Court Justice Philip Straniere of Livingston, another panelist and Wagner graduate, noted he supported the goals of Black Concern. He said other white students like himself who “shut down the campus for 10 days to protest a tuition hike” a year before the Cunard take-over were not dealt with as harshly as the black students.
Wagner president Dr. Richard Guarasci did not attend the event due to illness, a spokesman said.
