“This issue is core to the survival of Ithaca College.”
James E. Taylor '00

Demonstrations similar to the ones on IC’s campus occurred on at least 50 other campuses nationwide last fall, including the University of Missouri, Harvard, Duke, and Yale. Like these and the other colleges and universities across the nation, IC is at an inflection point regarding diversity, inequality, and the changing demographics of our nation.

Historically, institutions of higher education have lagged behind changes in national demographics, remaining predominantly white as the country becomes less so. Yet in past decades, the percentage of students of color at U.S. colleges and universities has increased, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

While student demographics are gradually catching up to the national statistics, faculty numbers have a much greater distance to go. In 2014, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 38 percent of Americans identified as “nonwhite,” while, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 21 percent of faculty members nationwide do. IC’s faculty is 11 percent ALANA, while 22.1 percent of Tompkins County residents consider themselves as “nonwhite.” Students and faculty coming to IC may be moving to a far less diverse community than they are used to. According to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau, more than half of all Americans will belong to a “nonwhite” group by 2044. These changes have important implications for institutions like IC. The report also states that in the next 15 years, the number of white children who will reach college age will decrease by nearly 15 percent, while the number of nonwhite children will increase by about 7 percent. How colleges respond to these demographic shifts will shape their culture and structure for many decades to come.

“This issue is core to the survival of Ithaca College,” says James E. Taylor ’00, vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer at UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). In a nation that continues to grow more diverse by the day, Taylor says, academic institutions and Fortune 500 corporations that fail to adapt to the cultural needs of their constituents are destined to gradually become irrelevant.

There has also been a nationwide rise in activism, especially concerning issues of race. The Black Lives Matter movement is one example. The fall 2015 Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey, conducted by UCLA every year for the past 50 years, found that college students’ interest in political and civic engagement had reached an all-time high. About 41 percent of those questioned said that promoting racial understanding is essential, an increase of 10 percentage points from 2011. Nearly 9 percent said they would be likely to take part in protests or demonstrations, compared to 6 percent in 2011.

For many young people, their college years are a time when they become more aware of and engaged in improving the world around them and addressing injustice. At Ithaca College, this is a set of skills and values that is actively taught—which makes it all the more important for the institution itself to be responsive to the issues its own students are facing on campus.

Beverly Daniel Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College, national expert on race relations, and author of “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”: And Other Conversations about Race, says the following about racial unrest on college campuses: “I think the national context has been one that reminds our students of color, and particularly African American students, that race still matters in our society. I think it’s also important to put into context the fact that most of these activities are happening at predominantly white institutions.”

Surveying the current generation, Tatum sees students who have come of age with an African American president and media role models from underrepresented groups, and who “want to see themselves reflected at their institutions. They come to college with a higher set of expectations, and once they arrive, perhaps more than they anticipated, they find themselves on the margins.”

This is reflected in the demands made by students across the country last year. An analysis by poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight of 51 campuses where race-related demonstrations were held in fall 2015 shows that the most prevalent demands were to increase faculty and student diversity and provide diversity training to students and faculty members. The Diverse Learning Environments Survey out of UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) found that many college students — 57.5 percent — reported having witnessed or experienced discrimination on campus. Another survey from HERI found that, at institutions where minorities make up less than 20 percent of the student population, at least half of black and Latino students reported that they have experienced discrimination in the form of verbal comments (see our piece on microaggressions). Meanwhile, in a Gallup poll of college and university presidents, 84 percent described race relations on their campuses as “good” or “excellent.” This disconnect creates a point of friction on many campuses.

Students and faculty of color may wind up making a sacrifice regardless of how they decide to cope with these issues: they either put up with persistent acts of bias that take a toll on them a little more with each passing day, or they make the heavy investment in time, energy, and emotion to try to push for change and educate their predominantly white peers on issues those peers may not even realize they are perpetuating.

The student members of the People of Color at IC (POC at IC), the group that led the campus protests this past fall, declined to comment for this article. The group has an established policy of not speaking with the media. Gonzalez explains, “Essentially, they felt they had already, repeatedly, made their grievances known. Those of us who were listening—they have told us. I’ve been hearing the same requests and concerns from students since I arrived at IC nine years ago.”

Read on:

Where Do We Go from Here? (part 4)