Editorial | We have to break the cycle

Photo by TRYPHENA YEBOAH, Staff Writer

Over the past few months, there’s been too many times where we as students have not been proud to be Panthers. 

We, for instance, were not proud when Dayton Kingery made blatant racist and homophobic slurs in a classroom on our campus. We weren’t proud when it took 150 people protesting to take down the controversial “The Birth of Nation” film poster from our halls. We weren’t proud when President Emeritus Jim Doti, referred to what would eventually become the Cross-Cultural Center as an area that would “ghettoize” our campus. 

There’s a common theme within these incidents – not relating to purely their nature. Each slowly faded away in Chapman’s memory. Administration and the student body alike treated the discussion of each as a trend, a topic to be hotly debated during faculty-led forums and university email updates. These events can galvanize us into action, but they shouldn’t be the only sparks that fuel a flame. 

Despite surface-level changes, the underlying truth of BIPOC students not being properly supported remains. The truth is, if actual systemic change had been present within the fabric of this campus, there’s a strong chance these incidents might not have repeated themselves. 

Here’s the deal. We’ve reached a truly critical point in this university’s history; a point where Chapman can change for the better, or simply continue to be the school that shows up in national headlines such as “Chapman student arrested after racist, homophobic rant is caught on video.” Yes, COVID-19 has made it difficult to push for physical, in-person change. Yet, there are clear steps we can take to make this campus a safer place for BIPOC, LatinX and LGBTQIA+ students. 

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, over 500 viewers attended a virtual town hall meeting June 3 to heed the words and sentiments shared by Chapman’s Black Student Union (BSU) and create a supportive space where Black students and allies can come together. After the event, BSU members – Ramya Sinha, Sage Okolo, Promise Johnson, Sofia Montgomery and Haleluya Wondwosen – penned a detailed action plan that calls for firm change to support Chapman’s Black community. In the span of two months, they’ve received over 1,000 signatures in support of the plan.

This plan needs to not only be signed and seen by students, but the administration needs to show more apparent commitment to achieving these action items, these initiatives that can propel us toward equity and inclusivity. Steps in the right direction have certainly been taken:  Individual colleges within Chapman have begun to hire more BIPOC faculty, and starting this fall, Residence Life and First Year Experience will implement diversity training into its orientation curriculum for first-year students. While this training program is a huge win for BSU, Chapman’s BIPOC community and the overall betterment of the campus environment, one win isn’t enough. Stopping there, with actions that feel more like a response to a movement than a true goal for long-lasting change, would simply send us back down the road we’ve already travelled. Again, diversity and inclusion isn’t a trend. It needs to encompass the future of this institution. 

As a student body, we can’t simply blame the administration and walk away. We have our own responsibilities, even in a time where we can’t be activists from inside the physical walls of a classroom. And the biggest component to that responsibility is actually listening to voices of BIPOC students on campus – taking the time to read BSU’s plan and think of how we can physically implement the basis of those requests into our own daily lives. Social media can be a fantastic tool, but it’s not enough to repost an Instagram story and walk away. Having difficult or educational conversations with other students can work to create a more informed, intertwined community. We are as much a part of the problem as the administration, if not a larger one; ignoring it will only lead to the replication of past incidents. 

We can’t see this movement slowly fade away. When we – as an administration, a student body, a collective – work to listen and elevate each other’s voices, we can create a communal space where every person can thrive, and our own campus should be no exception of that. Let’s leave the past in the past.