Opinion | A resignation from BSU’s executive members

Ramya Sinha, president of Black Student Union, junior business administration major and sociology and Africana Studies double minor

For centuries, Black women have been at the forefront of social movements, showing up and speaking out even when nobody else would. We get things done and it's apparent, but that does not mean the burden of doing this work should be dropped solely on our shoulders with the expectation that we are always going to “handle it.” This is something that the Black Student Union (BSU) executive board members and I know too well. 

We are tired of doing things for Chapman University, just to have our initiatives be met with challenges and roadblocks at every turn. We are tired of meeting with people who play devil's advocate with our identity and lived experiences, actively adding to the trauma we face at Chapman on a daily basis. We are tired of speaking to professors who would much rather talk about how many books they have read or how scholarly of an individual they think they are because of their Ph.D.’s, rather than wanting to seek further understanding from the students who come to them with vulnerability and intellectual humility. We are tired of going into meetings with higher ups who never fail to belittle us, disrespect us, make us feel inferior or unintelligent and are aggressive to us no matter how many times we show them our humanity. 

We are people too, and we just want to help Black students, and all students of color, have a better experience at this predominantly white institution. It's sad that we not only have to fight for the acknowledgement of our ongoing struggles, but we also have to fight for them to believe us. Us speaking up on these issues and sharing our stories is not easy, and it’s even harder when we constantly have people waiting to question us and prove us wrong. 

We are tired of people speaking at us and not with us. We are tired of everyone assuming we will solve all problems, without even asking us if we are OK or caring at all about our safety, capacity or well-being. We are tired of Chapman students who reach out to us for their class projects and research, but immediately stop caring about the issues that impact us after they get their A. We are tired of our allies and community members who only pretend to care and support us in public for the clout, but couldn’t care less in private. We are tired of the Black community not showing up for us, even when we beg, making us feel as if our only purpose in these positions is to be a mouthpiece for Black students and to solve all the university's diversity and inclusion problems on our own. Quite frankly, we are tired of being treated this way, and we won't put up with it any longer.

The resignation of our entire executive board shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Even though the Black Student Union was one of the first student organizations to have been founded at Chapman in the early 1970s, there has been a clear pattern of burnout with its presidents and executive board members. Why? It’s because of all the free labor these positions demand. 

The executive board members of the Black Student Union protest on the steps of Memorial Hall Aug. 29. From left to right: Secretary Sofia Montgomery, Treasurer Haleluya Wondwosen, Social Media Chair Sage Okolo, President Ramya Sinha. (Not pictured: Vice President Promise Johnson.) Photo courtesy of Sinha

Being BSU president is like a full-time job, with hours upon hours spent each week doing something for the club — whether that’s meeting with someone to discuss our action plan, speaking for an interview, organizing Black History Month, planning club meetings, answering people’s messages on how to help or be an ally and responding to racist incidents on campus and on social media. Every day it's something new, and all of this work usually goes unseen and is always unpaid — unless you're a part of the Student Government Association and work as agents of the institution. All of the work we do for the community is voluntary and done out of our own time and energy. Yet we are constantly made to feel as if our efforts are not adequate enough or aren't executed in the exact way someone wants (usually by people who work for or are employed by this institution). We go above and beyond because we want to and because we care so much about this community and seeing tangible change come to fruition. 

It's hard to have done so much work for the past two years and now question if it's ever going to pay off. Are we going to be yet another group of individuals who fought hard for this club and for the community, just to have all of our efforts met with resistance, until we eventually leave, drop out, transfer or graduate? Whenever Chapman has a racist incident, it’s always the cultural clubs who are forced to fight back, deal with the mess and clean up after administrators who never outrightly condemn white supremacy and racism. And honestly, it’s exhausting. I think people forget that we are students too, and we are here to get a fair and equal education free from the constant threat of being the next victim of harassment and racism.

As president, I hosted four events — tentatively five, but we had to cancel the talent showcase due to lack of participation — for Black History Month. The attendance from the Black community was not great. One person showed up to our Zoom cooking event and none of the Black male students at Chapman showed up to a single meeting the entire month. This really led us to ask the question: Why are we doing all this work when our community doesn't even want to show up? 

One of the main lessons I have learned from being the president of an organization like BSU is that it does not matter how much effort I as an individual put into making change at this campus; if the Black community and the Chapman community as a whole does not show up, help to raise awareness and fight just as hard as I am for these changes, then nothing substantial is ever going to happen. I can stay up all day and night brainstorming ideas for what to do next, but if the rest of my community does not show up, it feels pointless. Who am I doing all this work for then? Our non-Black allies? 

We love them, but it’s hard hosting meetings and pushing initiatives for BIPOC students when only white allies show up to listen. The BSU community has transitioned from being tight-knit and supportive to non-existent and undependable. It’s daunting because this is an organization made up of multiple people who are all supposed to show up for each other continuously, not just when it's convenient for them or will look good for their image at the moment. 

The Black Student Union hosted an Aug. 29 protest on the steps of Memorial Hall, calling for Chapman administration to recognize and condemn racism on campus. Panther Archives

Sage Okolo, BSU’s social media chair, and I worked tirelessly this past summer on the action plan so that our executive board could present a concise document to the Chapman administration that lists our concerns as Black students and offers attainable solutions. After months of perfecting the 12-point plan, we were extremely disheartened when we reached out to administrators to have a serious discussion about how we can move forward with implementing each action item, because were met with apathetic responses to most of the items, telling us to go “work with SGA and our multicultural student organizations” to get this done. I tried again to have a productive conversation with the Dean of Students Jerry Price, but it quickly turned into a ‘behind closed doors’ shaming of my distrust for administrators, and of course, belittlement and gaslighting. This is nothing new, especially for Black women at Chapman, but to have been treated that way during my presidency by multiple administrators was a very upsetting yet awakening moment. 

It had finally sunk in that administrators genuinely did not care about the well-being of BIPOC students, faculty and staff at Chapman. They only care about optics and money. They try to figure out how they can use superficial diversity and inclusion initiatives to bring in revenue for the university, instead of actually listening to what students are asking for and implementing demands that would bring tangible, systemic, long-lasting change. This was made crystal clear after administrators dismissed a scheduled meeting with us about our action plan and then a couple of months later, President Daniele Struppa announced the relaunch of the Diversity Strategic Plan for 2023-2027. Struppa seems to think that diversity at Chapman has never been better, when he expressed his thoughts at the State of the University address stating that because the white student population has gone from 58% to 52%, it is now a “minority-majority school.”

I, as well as I’m sure any BIPOC student at Chapman, can tell you that it is surely and most positively not a “minority-majority” campus. There are constant reminders that whiteness and white supremacy are alive and even upheld at this institution. Just in one school year we have dealt with John Eastman and his racist birtherism argument and inciting capitol riots. On top of that, we get emails from Public Safety about neo-Nazi, white supremacist groups coming on or around campus, looking to rough up students who they perceive don’t belong and posting white supremacist propaganda stickers to recruit and to scare. Even inside the classroom, you'll find problematic professors who think it’s OK to say the n-word or use the f-slur. The hardest part is that a majority of the time, there's maybe one or two Black students in the class, which is frustrating especially when no one does anything about it. 

There’s clearly so much progress needed at this school, but administrators constantly remove themselves from doing actual anti-racism work — even though they have no problem sending community-wide emails saying they’ve been working with us on our 12-point action plan, when none of that is true. Administrators here never hold themselves accountable to any wrongdoings and that's a major problem. This is why we decided to reach out to other groups and faculty members on campus to help us push our action plan forward. 

Eventually a Faculty Senate group, made up of professors from many different colleges within Chapman, was officially formed to elevate our academic and curricula-based items. We appreciate the faculty group and wish more members of the Chapman community would be equally proactive in organizing and fighting for our action plan, because our executive board cannot do this work alone. There is still so much to be done, and us five individuals cannot push a whole entire institution to change all on our own. 

We have fought hard, and we are burnt out. We need the rest of the Chapman community to wake up and do something about this. Step up and stop asking Black people what you can do to fight racism. We are telling you to act upon your words and prove your allyship by actually showing up, raising awareness and fighting for our action plan — because we cannot and will not galvanize change alone.