NEWS
FRIDAY, MARCH 29, 2019
THE HOYA
A5
WGST Activists, College Dean STOP Coalition Petitions Meet After 17-Month Push For Survivor Resources AMY LI AND CONNOR THOMAS Hoya Staff Writers
Students and faculty met with Georgetown College Dean Chris Celenza to discuss considerations associated with expanding the women’s and gender studies program into a department March 21. The meeting came after students delivered a letter to Celenza’s office March 1 urging Georgetown to respond to a 2017 proposal advocating for the WGST program to gain departmental status. The university has yet to publicly comment on the status of the proposal. The opportunity to communicate directly with the deans is a huge step in the long campaign for a WGST department, according to Kory Stuer (COL ’19), a WGST major who attended the March 21 meeting. “After over 17 months of no response from administrators, it is exciting to see that the Dean’s Office has now made addressing the disparities that WGST students face a priority,” Stuer wrote in an email to The Hoya. “I’m hopeful that the Dean’s Office is willing to make the necessary changes.” Katarina Watson (COL ’21), a WGST major who is spearheading the current push for a WGST department, and WGST program director You-Me Park also attended the March 21 meeting with Celenza, Dean David Edelstein and Vice Dean Sue Lorensen. At the meeting, Celenza gave the students a letter, thanking them for the letter drop and laying out some ideas for next steps. Celenza proposed that the university could hire a new WGST director who is already tenured and has experience working with a WGST department at another school. Celenza offered that this director could provide insight on the possible transition from program to department at Georgetown. However, students are concerned about the implications of this action on current director Park, according to Watson. “Then that also leaves the question open of what about You-Me
Park, because she’s our current director,” Watson said. “But she is not tenured.” Because of Georgetown only has a WGST program, none of the WGST professors are tenured or on the tenure track, and only two of its 12 faculty members work full time. If WGST becomes a department, its faculty will be able to pursue tenure and receive pay comparable to professors in other departments. A WGST department would also open up opportunities for undergraduate research and expand class offerings. Celenza also proposed forming an advisory board of students and faculty to continue planning a potential transition from a program to a department. He also offered students a timeline explaining what the university has been doing since the proposal was originally submitted in 2017. In the months following the proposal’s submission, Celenza’s office created a committee of women’s and gender studies-adjacent faculty to review the proposal. The committee conducted interviews of faculty, students and alumni over the course of the 2018 spring semester to gauge opinions of what the administration should do going forward. The committee then submitted its recommendation to Celenza’s office in the summer of 2018. The advisory board would be able to provide students opportunities to advocate for departmental status within institutional channels, according to Stuer. “At this point, the emphasis for us is on working together with the deans’ office as much as possible and showing them that a department is the best way forward for WGST,” Stuer said. Though the meeting was a welcome development, students will continue to garner support and engage in activism, Watson said. “At this point I’m happy with any communication, but I did leave the meeting feeling kind of lackluster,” Watson said. “I don’t know the intricacies of how we form a department, but I know that we need more professors. We need more office space. We need
more mentorship. We need more research, and these are things we tell them time and time again and they seem to just kind of disregard it in a way.” The initial proposal for a WGST department, submitted October 2017, asked for two full-time tenure-track positions, two to three additional full-time, nontenuretrack faculty positions and a fiveyear dual enrollment Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts program. The College deans plan to open up communication with the student body in the near future, according to university spokesperson Matt Hill. “The College’s leadership is continuing to meet with faculty and students to discuss the proposal and remains committed to Women and Gender Studies prospering at Georgetown,” Hill wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We look forward to providing more information in the coming months.” Although no further meetings between the students and deans have been set yet, Watson said she hopes the dean’s office will be more transparent and responsive moving forward. “It still doesn’t justify the complete lack of communication,” Watson said. “And that is something they addressed and something I think that’ll be a complete 180 from before because I’ve emailed Celenza, Edelstein and Lorensen now and they’ve all responded extremely promptly and have answered all my questions.” Students pushing for a full WGST department held an interest meeting March 24. The group is currently collecting student statements about how WGST professors have helped them grow personally or academically via a Google form. Students are focusing on spreading awareness of the campaign and engaging in continuous activism, according to Watson. “We don’t need this to be drawn out, because we know what we need and want,” Watson said. “With this sort of thing, activism should never stop, because complacency is very dangerous in these types of situations.”
TAYLOR KAHN-PERRY Hoya Staff Writer
The Georgetown S.T.O.P. Coalition, which advocates for black female survivors of sexual assault, called for greater trauma support for black women and femmes on campus in a letter delivered to the office of University Provost Robert Groves on March 22. The petition has garnered signatures from 315 undergraduate students, including Georgetown University Student Association President Norman Francis Jr. (COL ’20) and Vice President Aleida Olvera (COL ’20). The letter drop was organized by S.T.O.P. and preceded by a walkout into Red Square. The drop comes after a March 13 discussion about masculinity hosted by the Black House revealed a lack of resources and university support for black women and femmes, according to the petition. Chloe Diggs (COL ’19), co-organizer of S.T.O.P., read the letter to Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson and Senior Associate Dean Adanna Johnson in the lobby of the provost’s office, requesting an official response to the letter’s demands by March 29. Olson thanked the students for the letter and promised a response would be issued by their requested deadline. The university must listen to black women about their experiences to develop appropriate resources, said Nile Bee (COL ’22), a student involved in the letter drop. “It’s OK, in dealing with these types of issues and hearing the way that black women feel, if you don’t have any inherent experience tied to it,” Bee said. “It’s OK to not know; it’s just not OK to dismiss them or to dismiss us.” The proposal calls for the hiring of an additional black trauma specialist. Currently, Jennifer Wiggins, assistant director for sexual assault response and prevention services, is the only black trauma specialist working on campus.
The letter also requests the university increase representation of black professionals in the Title IX office and the Office of Student Conduct to assist students with filing Title IX reports. The university has not had a full-time Title IX coordinator since Laura Cutway left her position unexpectedly in June 2018. Samantha Berner has been serving as both Title IX investigator and Title IX coordinator as the university searches for a new coordinator. However, the university should not neglect qualifications and experience in pursuit of increased representation, Bee said. “It’s not just hiring more black people, it’s hiring reputable, comprehensive, educated-in-that-areaof-policy black women and men and nonbinaries who can handle these things,” Bee said. “What I don’t want is for us to be so committed in pushing forward for diversity and then it not actually be represented in the policies because the black people that they then hire in response aren’t actually educated, experienced and prepared in the areas they’re supposed to help us grow.” S.T.O.P. is designed to be an acronym that can be interpreted multiple ways, according to the petition. While the “S” always stands for survivors, the following three letters are interchangeable for phrases based on each survivor’s interpretation, according to the petition. Potential meanings include Survivors Targeting Oppressive Policies, Survivors Taking Out Perpetrators, Survivors Transforming Our Pain, Survivors Taking Our Place, Survivors Telling Our Perspectives and Survivors Tending Organic Power. In addition to greater representation in campus offices, S.T.O.P. seeks to develop comprehensive sexual assault education on campus that goes beyond programming developed by Health Education Services. The coalition also aims to strengthen relationships between ally offices such as the
Women’s Center and implement increased implicit bias training for Georgetown University Police Department officers that is designed with student input. Students also proposed an evaluation and oversight system under which S.T.O.P. would publish a letter grade for the university each semester based on its compliance with the coalition’s demands. Students’ voices must be included to ensure that any new initiatives are in touch with the needs of black women and femmes on campus, Diggs told Olson at the drop. Coalition leaders intentionally made the language around gender identity in the letter inclusive to all female-identifying individuals, according to Diggs. “In this letter, the use of ‘womxn,’ as opposed to ‘women,’ is meant to speak directly to the experiences of both black women and femmes,” Diggs said. Olson told the students that initial discussions about the letter would take place internally when asked by Shakera Vaughan (COL ’19), president of Georgetown University Women of Color, if students would be part of the administration’s discussions in response to the letter. “I see all your concerns as legitimate,” Olson said. “I don’t know what else to say in this moment. I take it very seriously. I promise that we will answer that question directly by next Friday. I don’t know what more I can say that would be satisfying.” Vaughan told Olson that the university’s actions in response to the letter are more important than a written or verbal response. Bee hopes the university will take serious action to provide the desired resources and stressed the role allyship plays in S.T.O.P.’s work. “It can’t just be us,” Bee said. “Because if it’s just us who are outraged, who are upset, who see the necessity of change, then nothing’s going to get done, because we can’t really do it by ourselves.”
Native American Rep. Advocates For Minority Political Activism NISHANT BHAUMIK Special to The Hoya
Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) urged indigenous women to advocate for the issues affecting their communities in political dialogue Tuesday. The experiences of indigenous women give them a greater capacity to respect cultural pluralism and multilingualism, according to Haaland, one of the first two Native American women to serve in the U.S. Congress. “I feel that what I bring to the table is my perspective as an indigenous woman. I know how to respect cultures. I know how to respect traditions. I know how to be respectful when somebody is speaking their indigenous language,” Haaland said. “I know the United States has a trust responsibility to Indian tribes, and that goes for all Indian tribes.” Haaland, who took office earlier in 2019, became the first Native American woman to ever preside over the U.S. House of Representatives this month. Addressing her role as a female legislator, Haaland said that although women have to work harder to gain recognition in the U.S. government, they should use that platform to boost issues that their constituents care about. “We just have to be ourselves and push forward and say we’re here because we care about the people we are representing,” Haaland said. “We’re here because we want our ideas and our issues to be at the forefront, and that’s really why anyone should want to serve the public, because they care deeply about the constituency.” Haaland participated in an event titled “Intersectional Feminism in Congress,” hosted by the women’s and gender studies department in the Reiss Science Building. The event was moderated by YouMe Park, director of the WGST program, and featured a conversation between Haaland and Donna Brazile, a WGST adjunct assistant professor and former chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Minority representatives should not be intimidated about advocating for issues that directly affect their communities, Haaland said. “It’s all about getting involved, it’s all about making sure that you are advocating for the right things,” Haaland said. “Because quite frankly, there are a lot of folks in Congress who don’t know or understand even what tribes are, or what that relationship is, or what they should be doing.” The barriers faced by minority representatives such as Haaland can only be dismantled once young American voters show the willingness to take political initiative, according to Brazile. “We can make it possible that one day we wake up and we’re not counting two Native American women. And we’re not counting a handful of African-Americans, and a handful of Hispanics and a handful of openly gay candidates,” Brazile said. “Your generation, the largest generation
of voters, you can make that happen. And why you? I tell it to my students, you know, because there’s no one better. And why now? Because tomorrow is not soon enough.” Haaland is particularly concerned about addressing some of the issues faced by Native American communities, such as the high occurrence of disappearances and murders of indigenous women. Native women on tribal lands face a murder rate 10 times higher than the national average, according to a 2016 Department of Justice report. Improvements must be made to law enforcement structures in native communities, according to Haaland. “So much needs to be done,” Haaland said. “If tribal police are the only ones on the scene for miles and miles and miles, they need to know how to handle evidence. The FBI needs to have a unit in their organization that deals more with this issue, because it’s in epidemic proportions.”
ROCHELLE VAYNTRUB FOR THE HOYA
Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) spoke out against high murder rates of Native American women on tribal lands at an event Tuesday.
SHEEL PATEL/THE HOYA
South Asian Society, led by Vishal Menon (MSB ’19), left, hosted a discussion with comedian Hasan Minhaj in Gaston Hall on Thursday. The event was co-sponsored by 14 other Georgetown student groups and offices.
Netflix Show Aims to Amplify Overlooked Stories, Minhaj Says MINHAJ, from A1 Trevor Noah” and was the featured comedian at the 2017 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Leading roles held by members of minority communities increased 13.6 percent from the 2011-2012 to the 20152016 seasons, according to the 2018 Hollywood Diversity Report from the University of California, Los Angeles. The increase in diversity has been significant not only on the screen, but also during the production process, according to Minhaj. “Over the last five or six years there has been a big push for inclusion and diversity in the writers’ rooms and in casting in shows, which I think has been a big win for everybody. I’ve seen that shift, and that has been really great,” Minhaj said. “A lot of time people think that inclusion and diversity is just in front of the camera, but there has been a lot of behind-the-camera stuff, in terms of the creation of the ideas producing the projects and all that stuff; that is a big deal.” Universities and other communities should uplift diverse performers and empower new voices to share their perspective and humor, according to Minhaj. “I think the good thing, and
I think the thing that Georgetown and a lot of schools can tap into, is just give that stage to a diversity of voices,” Minhaj said. “Whether it’s South Asian female voices, whether it’s queer voices, let those performers perform.” The “Patriot Act” news team and writers seek to amplify underreported stories that shed a light on little-known but nonetheless important issues, according to Minhaj. “The two biggest things that I try to look for on story are number one: hooking a story that makes people go, ‘Oh my God. How did I not know that? How was I just kind of walking around in my day to day life not knowing that?’ Or two: it’s a story that makes people go, ‘Oh my God. thank you for saying that,’” Minhaj said. Minhaj has been outspoken about college admissions practices on his Netflix show, criticizing a lawsuit by AsianAmericans suing Harvard University over the university’s admissions policy. In the show’s premiere episode, Minhaj accused the plaintiffs of potentially jeopardizing affirmative action with their suit, which alleges the university discriminates against Asian-Americans in its admission process. In an interview with The Hoya before his event, Minaj commented on his views on
the recent admissions scandal affecting Georgetown. A March 12 Department of Justice indictment alleged that former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst accepted bribes from parents in an admissions scheme involving seven other universities. Ernst falsely designated at least 12 applicants as recruits for the Georgetown tennis team, according to the indictment. The admissions cases should start a dialogue around the value universities place on legacy admission, according to Minhaj. “I think it has opened up a conversation around legacy admissions and I think that that is a big topic, especially because we are talking about meritocracy and everyone having an even playing field when they are applying to go to school,” Minhaj said in an interview with The Hoya. Minhaj said the DOJ allegations of admissions fraud at Georgetown and other elite universities did not shock him. “I wasn’t surprised at all,” Minhaj said in an interview with The Hoya. “I think we saw a lot of these stories coming out from the sports world before, and now that something so public is happening in academia I think, you know, I was disappointed to hear about it but I wasn’t surprised.”