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A Syracuse University Board of Trustees committee on diversity recommended Thursday that SU overhaul its student housing, expand diversity training and increase transparency to improve the campus climate. 

The Board of Trustees Special Committee on University Climate, Diversity and Inclusion released its final report on Thursday. The committee — which first met in December 2019, off the heels of #NotAgainSU’s occupation of the Barnes Center at The Arch — was devoted to addressing issues of diversity and inclusion on SU’s campus following a series of hate incidents reported in the fall 2019 semester. 

“The most important thing we did was listen really, really carefully to what we were hearing,” said Richard Alexander, one of the co-leaders of the committee, in an interview with The Daily Orange. “And much of what is in our report is in direct response to what we were being told by the key stakeholders. We heard loud and clear what was being said.”

Among its recommendations, the committee proposed moving all student residencies to Main Campus to “better integrate” SU’s student population. This would mean effectively eliminating, or at least sharply reducing, South Campus housing. 

A disproportionate number of students of color relocate to South Campus during their sophomore year, the report stated, and those students have reported feeling higher levels of surveillance and disciplinary action from SU’s Department of Public Safety than their white peers. The report never states such a disparity exists, referring instead to students’ “perceived” marginalization. 

“While moving all student residences to North Campus would require a significant financial commitment, such an investment would better integrate student populations, reinforce living/learning communities housed near the academic center of campus, (and) significantly upgrade the quality of the residential student experience,” the report reads. 

The students who spoke with the committee said they were more heavily policed than white students living in Greek life chapter houses on Comstock and Walnut avenues. The committee attributed this to the Greek life houses falling under the Syracuse Police Department’s jurisdiction, where “there is seldom enforcement of underage drinking, open alcohol containers and noise violations.”

The committee also recommended expanding diversity training for all SU employees, students and stakeholders — including tenured faculty. Contrary to SU’s previous diversity training methods, the new training programs should be ongoing and include means of measuring their effectiveness, it said.  

“Some students were vocal and adamant about a lack of understanding of diverse cultures and lived experiences by faculty and instructors and pointed to explicit examples of behavior they felt was objectionable,” the report states. 

The report also includes several recommended changes to SU’s core curriculum while encouraging future discussion about how to better implement diversity into curriculum moving forward.

“We have committed ourselves personally and as a board to the long-term commitment not only to oversee the recommendations but to potentially oversee new ones,” said Jeffrey Scruggs, the other co-leader of the committee. “It’s not a static thing. This is going to be evolutionary, and it’s not ever going to stop.”

The committee supports efforts to replace the non-credit SEM 100 freshman seminar with a one-credit First Year Seminar. Many students have deemed the SEM 100 course ineffective and lacking in scope, and it was one of many issues raised during #NotAgainSU’s demonstrations last academic year. 

The committee also expressed support for a requirement, previously passed by the University Senate, to mandate all upper-level undergraduate students take a three-credit course related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It stopped short, though, of explicitly endorsing the university-wide diversity curriculum several faculty members proposed in Dec. 2019, saying such a curriculum would be challenging for SU’s professional schools to implement. 

Another curriculum change that the committee recommended was the addition of a mandatory course on civics and citizenship, made in response to “the increasing polarization of our national discourse and the coarsening of national dialogue.”

“This is the beginning of a journey. This is an inflection point, and the work will change, and inevitably, we will face new challenges, but we think if we can create the infrastructure and the oversight, we will be in a better place to deal with those issues going forward,” Alexander said.

The committee’s report comes a week after former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch released her review of DPS, which included multiple recommendations to reform the department. SU Chancellor Kent Syverud said at a University Senate meeting that he agreed to Lynch’s recommendations and would direct SU leadership to begin implementing them.

The Board of Trustees committee said it supports Lynch’s recommendations and encourages the university to implement them in full.

Similarly, the report also recommends SU fully implement its commitments to student groups that protested in the 2019-20 academic year, including #NotAgainSU demonstrators, as well as Jewish, Indigenous and International students. It classifies most of these commitments as complete, though #NotAgainSU disputes the university has made substantial progress toward meeting its demands. 

The report only mentions #NotAgainSU once by name. 

“To the extent that the administration entered into commitments with various student organizations, our recommendation or expectation is that those commitments are going to be met and that they’re going to be appropriately resourced,” Alexander said.

In its final recommendation, the committee expressed support for increasing diversity in SU’s predominantly white and predominantly wealthy Board of Trustees.

“The Board of Trustees is committed to achieving a diverse, equitable, inclusive and respectful campus for the benefit of our students, faculty, staff, administration and community,” the report concludes. “As a part of this commitment, the Board aspires to have the diversity of its voting membership better reflect that of the Syracuse University student body.” 

Published on March 4, 2021 at 6:10 pm

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu