The events that sparked last fall’s unrest on IC’s campus began in August. During a training session for resident assistants with public safety officers, the students felt their concerns about possible racial profiling by public safety were being dismissed. In October, an unaffiliated fraternity advertised an off-campus party that invited students to dress as “crooks” and wear “bling” in a “thuggish style” that equated blackness with thuggishness. And also in October, two white alumni panelists at an IC-sponsored event repeatedly used a racially insensitive term to refer to another alumna panelist of color.

After each incident, campus leaders shared messages with the community, describing initiatives that were already under way to promote a stronger culture of inclusion. But by late October, it was clear that, for many, those words and initiatives were insufficient. Throughout the fall semester, a series of demonstrations, walkouts, and other awareness-raising actions kept the local and national media focused on events at IC, while criticisms that President Rochon had not adequately addressed longstanding campus culture and governance issues culminated in a series of no-confidence votes.

“The root of all this is people saying, ‘I don’t feel I’m being heard.’”
Cornell Woodson '09

Many people who viewed the events of the fall from afar responded with confusion and even derision. To them, the incidents seemed relatively innocuous, and the activism that resulted seemed disproportionate. But others saw the incidents as a tipping point—the latest evidence of a longstanding cultural issue that different groups of faculty, students, staff, and administrators at IC had been working to address for many years with limited success.

“The root of all this is people saying, ‘I don’t feel I’m being heard,’” says Cornell Woodson ’09.

A student government president while at IC, Woodson now works as a diversity and inclusion administrator at Cornell University and recently launched Brave Trainings — a company which promotes dialogue about social issues. He says the issues at Ithaca predate IC’s current president and aren’t limited to race. The problem, he says, is one of broader leadership. Gonzalez and many other faculty and alumni with expertise on the issue agree that the blame — and potential solutions — go far beyond any one person or position.

The issues are, according to Gonzalez, in the fabric of the institution. “We need to intervene at every stage — in every department, in every classroom, every place that it’s appropriate — in order to really create a climate of inclusion,” she says. “What we’re really talking about is creating an equitable education experience. The history of higher education is built on exclusion, and we still have that in the fabric of Ithaca College.”

Read on:

How Does IC Fit into the National Context? (part 3)