Tag: diversity

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Black Students: Diversity at Houghton

Diverse skin tone hands
Diverse Hands Graphic - Courtesy of Kaitlyn Avery
By Abigail Bates ('26)

In Houghton University’s 2022-2023 academic year, 7% of the student body were black, 2% were Asian, 1% were Hispanic and 6% of the student population were non-resident aliens. The highest percentage of the student body were white (74%) and the majority of full-time staff (89%) were white as well (U.S. Department of Education).

“​​Most people from Houghton come from small towns, so they don’t really see diversity – I think Houghton is a place where, once you get to know people, you get to know them. But you have to be intentional,” Kenadi Hawkins (‘26), a black American student said. “If you don’t intentionally go up to somebody and get to know them or eat with them, you’re not going to know them and they’ll always have that preconceived assumption about you.”

Hawkins is the vice president of the Black Heritage Club and the Diversity and Inclusion Representative. Black Heritage Club’s President Bethany Tubman ’25, a black American student, was a Mosaic Center Ambassador her sophomore year and the Diversity and Inclusion Representative the following school year. They are both representatives on HU’s Diversity Committee.

Tubman recalled people who left Houghton due to off-campus racism. She said that “people on the outside of Houghton tend to be more aggressive in how they feel towards people” of different cultures and skin colors. Nana Kwame (‘25), a Ghanaian, agreed, recounting experiences with people who were neither students nor employees.

When Kwame first experienced Houghton’s community in-person (he started online in 2020), “diversity wasn’t really a thing.” He said that diversity has been improving, but he feels “like it can be better.”

Vice President for Student Life Bill Burrichter chairs the Diversity Committee. Associated for 35 years at Houghton University as a student and an employee, he stated that while the campus is more diverse today, it remains a challenge for the university.

HU’s Diversity Committee—composed of 1 faculty, 1 staff and 5 students—supports the initiatives of minority-serving organizations: Black Heritage Club, Hispanic Heritage Club and the Intercultural Student Association. The president or designee from each of these clubs serves on the committee along with the Diversity and Inclusion Representative (from Student Council) and a representative from the Kingdom Initiative.

The committee was established from a 2017 diversity task force formed in response to a publicly discussed racial hate crime on HU’s campus. Since the creation of the committee, the Bias Incident Form has become more available on the university’s website and the Mosaic Multicultural Center was opened and then closed in the 2023 Spring semester.

“I think the biggest thing for us institutionally is for us to continue to be curious,” Burrichter said. “Continue to ask questions. To seek to know, to understand. And then a willingness on other people’s parts to share some of that, and to help us understand.”

He explained that the committee’s purpose is to increase understanding and awareness about diversity on campus. In committee meetings, they review initiatives and the institution’s diversity statement. Additionally, Burrichter mentioned that the committee has been positive in increasing communication between HU’s administration and students.

“I think those initiatives are directly because of [Houghton’s] longing to diminish the impact of racism,” Tubman said. “When in reality, you’re not going to be able to stop it. It’s a societal ill.”

Students pushed for the right to participate in the creation of Houghton’s diversity statement, she said. Tubman and Hawkins explained that the committee has looked at diversity statements of several Wesleyan colleges as they work on HU’s own.

“The purpose of the diversity statement is to put this expectation for, not only students but staff and faculty, to say like ‘if you don’t adhere to this, there’s accountability,’” Tubman said.

Students report various concerns, including incidents of racism or potential bias, by emailing Burrichter, Katie Breitigan (Dean of Students and Director of Student Life), Resident Assistants, campus-wide officials or by filling out the Bias Incident Form. HU’s Marketing Department also informs Student Life of posts containing accusations or reports of incidents. HU will then respond depending on each situation and how public the incident is.

Tubman explained that students often feel unheard and uncared for when “accountability can’t be done as publicly as people want it to be, for legal reasons, privacy issues.” Students are then left with unsettled feelings, she added.

“I’ve been behind the scenes for three years now. And I think from a student perspective it can look like nothing is being done,” Tubman said.

Hawkins stated that the student body should know more about the actions taken in response to HU’s diversity, because while diversity is discussed behind the scenes, “a lot of students don’t really talk about it or know about it.”

Tubman explained that although students desire transparency from the university, complete transparency isn’t possible “in a business model, any business model.”

“Even though I am 120% for complete transparency,” Tubman said, “it is not attainable for ethical reasons of the people who are involved. And it makes me very weary to say that, but I think a lot of what I’ve heard from people is that they just wish people would be more transparent…

“I wish people would be more transparent,” she added.

Both Hawkins and Tubman emphasized how much Breitigan and Burrichter care about racial and ethnic minority groups on campus. Hawkins said that it’s important for the committee to know where to start responding to issues of diversity and how to create effective change.

“I think that it’s a lot more of a daunting task than we realize,” Tubman said, “because we are still in America, and we can’t mitigate the oppressions of America.” She explained that a set amount of discrimination, stereotypes and self-segregation naturally accompanies U.S. society. Therefore “it’s really hard for them to know where to start, because it’s like, ‘What is a Houghton thing and what is an American thing?’” ★

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News

Houghton Students attend Faith and International Development Conference

Between February 6 and February 8, a group of 22 Houghton students attended Calvin College’s Faith and International Development Conference (FIDC) in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

According to Ndunge Kiiti, intercultural studies, Houghton students have been consistently attending this conference since 2006, though “we’ve missed maybe one (or maybe even two) years.” However while intercultural studies and political science faculty typically organize the trip to Calvin, this year the organization of the trip was mainly due to student initiatives from Sarah Slater and Hanna Kahler, juniors.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAKahler was most interested in attending this conference because of the influence her older sister who attended a few years prior and found the conference to be “wonderful.” To Kahler, “it was always something on my bucket list.”

However, because of budgetary problems, it appeared at the beginning of this year that the trip to Calvin might not run after all. According to Slater, “usually there’s several thousand dollars in the budget in the intercultural studies department to do a conference trip but there wasn’t that money allocated this year” which prompted Slater and Kahler to take charge.

Slater and Kahler were mostly in charge of raising funds across many organization on campus, which included the SGA, the Intercultural Studies department, and GCF, in order to help assist the costs of transportation. Said Slater, many of the challenges revolved around funding and “keeping sane” during the two and a half week period that she and Kahler were given to organize the trip.

The group representing Houghton at Calvin was the largest at the conference at 22 students. Compared with years past, there were also more diversity of Houghton’s majors represented. Said Slater, “I’m pleased that we had more majors than usual. Usually it is just upper-level intercultural and political science majors, but this year we also had students from business, art, psychology, and physical therapy. We had a lot of student diversity.” Slater was particularly pleased because, “Part of the nature of international development is that you’re trying to include everyone so I feel like a conference about international development should reflect that.”

The focus of the conference revolved around the idea of “cultivating community” and, according to the conference handbook, to answer the questions, “Who is cultivating community? How? Who belongs where? Why? What does community look like?” by looking at these questions through the light of “Christ’s work on the cross.”

The keynote speaker at the conference was Brian Fikkert, a professor of economics and community development and author of “When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor… And Yourself.” Fikkert spoke about his work involving microfinancing in developing countries and also, in keeping with the theme of the conference, his core belief that human beings were made for relationships with God and each other.

Other speakers at the conference included: Rob and Tara Cahill, directors of Community Cloud Forest Conservation; Dr. Minus Hiruy of Hope University College in Ethiopia; and Tarek Abuata, Palestine Coordinator for the Christian Peacemakers Team.

For Kahler, “it was pretty cool to meet these professors that were foundational in their field and had written these books…. Overall, it was nice to get a feel for the development organizations that are out there.”

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Opinions

Words Matter: A Proposal for Change

“And Goddess said, Let us make woman in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So Goddess created woman in her own image, in the image of Goddess created she her; female and male created she them.” –Genesis 1:26-27

goddessThe (somewhat) familiar words that appear above are taken from the digital version of the “Queen Jamie” Bible found through a curious little website called “regender.com.” Though I’m not proposing that we henceforth adopt this translation at Houghton, I include this website as one example of many tools that are used to demonstrate the real and affective power of language. The issue of considerate, respectful usage extends to every aspect of meaningful interaction with others. Words mean things and exclusive, hurtful words, whether used deliberately or not, can communicate damaging messages. Words matter. As far as I’m concerned, the validity of this short statement is not up for debate. I’d add that, whether you’re incensed or intrigued by the passage quoted at the start, you’ve proved my analysis correct.

Acknowledging that words matter, the question becomes, how do we handle language? Issues of “language justice” are wide and varied. One may note that there are certain discriminatory names that we’ve agreed not to call one another. The fact that I need not identify them is proof enough of our more-or-less consensual agreement. I say more-or-less because, of course, battles are still being fought, and though I don’t want to callously ignore sensitive issues, I do want to zero in on the one area of language usage of which I believe Houghton as an institution is negligent, namely, gender-inclusive language.

Despite the way I started this piece, I don’t want to address gender-inclusive language only with respect to the Bible. Certainly, I think the way we talk about gender, theology, and Christianity is important to consider, and if you are interested in this intersection, get ahold of Dr. Lacelle-Peterson’s book, “Liberating Tradition.” Leaving that conversation to experts, I will use the remainder of my space to talk about the more broad presence (or, rather, absence) of gender-inclusive language standards at Houghton.

I recently interviewed several faculty members as part of a project on inclusive language. None of them could point to any college-wide policy that actively addresses gender-inclusivity with respect to college communications, student usage and awareness, or academic writing guidelines. Though several years ago there was a “diversity committee” set up to draft a school-wide policy on the topic, the resulting document was never institutionalized. Though some individuals voluntarily include sections of this proposed policy in their syllabi, there are no stated, compulsory expectations.

I was surprised by my lack of findings. I decided to research official policies at other institutions. Every school that I found in my search was connected with respect to approving, adopting, or maintaining this or that guideline for non-sexist communication, whether in academic writing, in marketing, or in student handbooks (for example, UNC replaced every instance of “freshman” with “first year student”). Lest you think that I’m unjustly pushing “secular standards” of higher education (whatever that means), I’ll go ahead and mention some examples closer to home. Apart from many seminary institutions, Calvin College, George Fox University, Goshen College, Westmont College, and Wheaton College all deliberately and publicly use their website to address the importance of gender inclusive and non-discriminatory language.

In identifying the above schools, I don’t mean to suggest that they have all the kinks figured out. People in higher education everywhere struggle with flawlessly maintaining gender-inclusive language; no one is perfect, and surely mistakes are made in myriad places and contexts. I’m also not insinuating that the Houghton community has done nothing to support gender-inclusive language. Many individuals consistently model consciousness usage, and I’m thankful that, as I mentioned, some professors have addressed gender-inclusive language on their own terms. I bring up other schools because doing so emphasizes the dramatic lack of institutional support at Houghton. Relying on instructor-initiated treatment unnecessarily politicizes what should be a non-issue, and the preeminence of gender-inclusive usage should supersede professorial preference. For deeply moral and political reasons, it’s simply a fact that no serious college has made it to this point in the 21st century without requiring gender-inclusive language.

Call it naiveté, but I’m optimistic that the majority of people at Houghton will agree with me. In the spirit of community dialogue recently championed by Dean Jordan in his “Christians and Same Sex Attraction” lecture, I welcome any disagreement in the form of conversation. However, if my hopes about this community prove true, then the institution need only stand behind its individuals. It’s time we make up our mind, make it policy, and make it public.

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News

Climate Survey Takes Campus Temperature for Diversity Audit

With the Campus Climate Survey, issued this week by the Diversity Audit Committee, Houghton College has begun to “take the temperature” of the students, faculty, and staff on campus regarding topics of ethnic, racial, sexual, gender, and disability-based diversity.

Image courtesy of http://www.meridianschools.org/
Image courtesy of http://www.meridianschools.org/

Professor Intí Martínez-Alemán explained from where the need for a Diversity Audit came. In 2009 an incident occurred during a chapel celebrating Black History Month. Two students, one dressed as a gorilla and another in a banana costume, ran through the aisles. Professor Martínez-Alemán cited this event as a key piece of evidence in Houghton’s administration’s realization that diversity, and the way students perceive it, might be an important issue to address on campus.

Later in 2009, a few professors and college administrators attended a conference in Vermont which dealt with diversity topics on college campuses. Documents concerning the then-current state of diversity on Houghton’s campus and goals for where the discussion on diversity and the implementation of policies encouraging diversity should have gone in the coming years. According to Professor Martínez-Alemán, this document and its ideas were not explicitly implemented in any way. The Diversity Audit is ultimate result of earlier attempts to analyze Houghton in light of ethnic, racial, sexual, gender, and disability topics.

Once the results of the survey are compiled, the Committee plans to analyze the results and then create focus groups based on these results. This April, Jane Higa, current Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students at Westmont College, will be coming to Houghton to look at the Committee’s and focus groups’ findings and to help draft a final document to present to the Board of Trustees and Administration of the college.

Professor Martínez-Alemán said “[we] have this idea of an average Houghton student: white, female, and 18-22 years old. Anyone that does not fit that description [, on our campus,] is diverse.” And so the Diversity Audit’s purpose is to take a look at why Houghton is most attractive to young, white females and to discover how, once students enroll and spend time at Houghton, the college shapes their thinking about themselves and people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, for example.

Dennis Stack, Houghton’s Dean of Students, emphasized this purpose as primary to the committee. The Diversity Audit, and particularly the Campus Climate Survey is not at all meant to target any one group or make individuals feel guilty for thinking or feeling a certain way about others. Stack described the survey as a “safe, risk free, and comfortable” way for people to share their honest feelings about people different from themselves.

“We really want to know, or it would be really great to know, what lens everybody is looking at life through,” said Stack. And he followed by saying, “it would be of course ideal for everyone to see through the same lens, and for that lens to be the same one Jesus sees through.”

In order to get an accurate idea of the campus climate as related to issues of diversity, the Committee hopes for people to be willing to participate. Stack said, “we want everyone to take [the survey] because we want everybody represented.” The number of responses to the survey has already surpassed Stack’s original expectation, and he is hopeful that the rest of campus will take the initiative and contribute.

Ellen Musulin, a sophomore, is one of the students who chose to participate in the Campus Climate Survey. After completing the survey, she said, “It made me think, and took longer than I expected.” Musulin also related the relevance and merit of the survey; she said “I think the survey will help begin the process of looking at the topic of diversity;  If this is truly an issue, then the college should really continue talking to students, faculty, and staff.”

President Mullen is also involved with the Diversity Audit. In response to a question that came up in the SGA student forum concerning the purpose of the Campus Climate Survey and the Diversity Audit, President Mullen said, “The Audit really should have happened three years ago.” And now that the Diversity Committee has been reformulated, with the President’s input, she is encouraging students to “participate thoughtfully.”

President Mullen also echoed and expanded upon the sentiments of Dennis Stack. She said, “we need to figure out a little more fully what it means to have a theology [in the realm of diversity] that is as rich and deep as the kingdom of God.”

In conclusion to the SGA Senate, President Mullen admitted that the process of a hard look at the college in light of diversity will not necessarily easy. She concluded her short address of the topic by saying “if we are going to go through with this, it is going to require some tough discussions, and I am committed to having those discussions.”