VICTOR SCHMITT-BUSH
Assistant News Editor
According to Fredonia’s “Right Serving, Right Sizing” final report of Fall 2017, with more than 30 percent of students enrolled from minority groups, Fredonia’s diversity is reaching new heights. More students than ever are expressing their interest in ethnic clubs, and they are making new connections with people of all sorts of racial and ethnic backgrounds.
However, it has come into question whether campus leaders and staff have adequately adapted to the change in the needs of its new population.
According to Tia McNair, the vice president in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Student Success at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, it is up to the Fredonia faculty and staff to pay close attention to these needs. She believes that understanding and fulfilling the needs of diverse students on a diverse campus is vital to facilitating student success.
It was on Professional Development Day in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Williams Center that McNair introduced herself to Fredonia’s pedagogy and management staff. She began by explaining that if Fredonia wanted its students to succeed, then it was “time to flip the switch.”
“One of the main things that we ask ourselves is ‘Are students college ready?’ Well, are students college ready?” McNair asked the crowd. She walked closer to her audience, leaned forward and extended her hand over her ear, awaiting a reply.
The audience all unanimously shouted back to her, “No!”
“No, they’re not, right? But there’s a problem with focusing on students being college ready,” she said. “What do you think our problem is?”
One professor signaled to her that he was willing to answer.
“We can’t do anything to change it,” he said.
She then smiled and waved her finger at him as if that was the exact answer she was looking for.
“For some, that might be true, but we’re going to have an honest conversation today,” she said. “We could spend all of our time sitting here as an institution talking about students being college ready. We can’t change that, right? But, if we ask this question, ‘Are colleges student-ready?’ it changes the conversation.”
McNair asked, “When you hear the concept, student-ready, what comes to your mind?”
She received several answers. Some professors associated student-readiness with the idea that the faculty should focus more on hosting successful orientations, and others said it was merely to get students off to a good start, but it was McNair’s follow up response that turned heads.
She explained, “Some students will be better prepared than others, but we have to actually know who they are. We need to understand their lived experiences, understand their background, understand their cultural wealth.”
McNair placed heavy emphasis on the need for college staff to pay close attention to their vocabulary when describing minority students. She feels that universities are already doing them a major disservice when referring to them as underrepresented or at risk.
She said that universities should seriously consider saying “underserved” instead.
“We say underserved because it is not derogatory towards the students,” she said. “We don’t want students to think that there is something deficient in them.”
According to sophomore biology major Brooke Shields, Fredonia is a fairly accepting campus, but she still feels that work has to be done.
Shields explained, “Academically, I do love my department. I do have a few campus moms and campus dads who motivate me to ignore all of the major challenges that I face as a minority student, but I don’t think that the faculty is very diverse. I don’t think I’ve ever seen people of color faculty members here, not in the biology department.”
Shields comes from the city, so the shift in atmosphere from the busy streets of NYC to the rural atmosphere of Chautauqua county was a big culture shock for her.
“I didn’t expect people to be as kind and open as they are here. I think that that’s where the close environment comes into play, but I also feel that the close environment brings into play the ignorance that happens here, too.”
Both Shields and McNair have posited that ignorant acts that happen on college campuses like Fredonia are seldom intentional. Minority students are often underserved at the helm of good intentions. The paradigm shift that needs to take place, according to McNair, is the development of new student-ready policies and diversity training for staff.
“Our institutions are stuck in the past,” she said. “If you have all of these diversities in population in a single institution, can you have a ‘one size fits all’ philosophy? No, you can’t. That’s what it means to be student-ready, that you’re taking the time to look at the educational needs of all of your students.”
She placed heavy emphasis on the word “all.”
Perhaps McNair’s most compelling message is that what Fredonia is experiencing at the moment is its own paradigm shift, and it is up to its faculty members and staff to adapt to this change with grace and understanding. Perhaps the most humbling thing that professors may have taken out of this event, is that they too have much to learn, and that the students themselves are their teachers, too. Perhaps, it is time to “flip the switch.”