In the heat of final exams nearly a year ago, posters went up around Penn Valley encouraging students to meet for an upcoming protest against discrimination on campus.
On May 7, a group of protestors gathered in the cafeteria, and after an approving nod from PVCC President Bernard Franklin, issued forth peacefully to demonstrate with signs at Southwest Trafficway. A representative from the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) looked on, as well as some Penn Valley students, staff, and security guards.
The demonstrators walked across campus to the MCC Administration building on Broadway, where Angie Ferguson, President of the Black Student Association (BSA), delivered a list of four allegations and eleven demands. The first three complaints referred to specific incidents, and the fourth to an "overall hostile atmosphere" in some classes at Penn Valley.
Among other remedies the group asked for establishment of a minority-friendly grievance process, a formal student advocate, affirmative minority student and staff recruitment, better treatment of international and disabled stduents, and inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) students in the PVCC anti-discrimination policy.
Local minority newspapers were notified of the protest, but none published any coverage. (Evidently only Spectrum reported on the event, in our last issue that semester.)
Though the administrators later said they were told that formal complaints had been filed with NAACP and the US Department of Justice, apparently none actually had.
Rosa James, education mediator for NAACP and the protest observer, says that one person did later fill out a complaint form and return it to her personally, but she was told to "hold off" and did not forward the complaint from her office, since MCC had decided to "hire Gayle Holliday and see what she can do," and the complaint was later "lost in the shuffle."
 Bernard Franklin |
However, Ferguson, who not only led but helped organize the demonstration, says "I don't think any formal complaints were filed." She says NAACP was attending that day only to observe and provide practical advice.
Had NAACP been called upon officially to help resolve the conflict, James says they have a proven history of working with all sides to find solutions, on average within 90 days. "The process we have brings everyone that needs to be involved to the table," she says.
James says they sometimes work with DOJ's Whitcomb "in a nonthreatening way [to help] smooth the process" by simply checking with him on compliance issues so they don't come up later on. But she claims NAACP is usually able to help bring about an amicable consensus for all those who participate, without drawing it out over months.
Still, under the perception that protestors had not merely been demonstrating on campus but had or were about to alert external investigating agencies, MCC and Penn Valley administration elected to hire an external investigator of their own, G&H Consulting LLC, headed by Gayle Holliday, Ph.D, local anti-discrimination consultant and political campaign organizer.
In a phone interview with Spectrum, Holliday acknowledged that she has a working relationship with Bill Whitcomb of DOJ and Anita Russell, Kansas City branch President and national boardmember of NAACP.
She says that when hired by MCC, she was told DOJ and NAACP had already received complaints, so as a professional courtesy she called Whitcomb and Russell and advised them that her firm had been retained. She says they told her "We will wait until your investigation is done."
However, Holliday says she was not asked to be a formal government or agency liason, but specifically to look into "charges made by students, to see whether they rose to the level of racial discrimination, as defined by federal guidelines." (For more on the report and faculty criticism of it, see our story in this issue.)
She says her study concluded there had been "no actionable acts of discrimination" at PVCC, but she says that interviews with students and staff conducted while investigating the original allegations consistently pointed to related dissatisfaction and low morale, resulting if not from racism, then a probable "climate of cultural insensitivity" at PVCC.
G&H produced their report in November of last year; after review by MCC, its results were formally presented to faculty, staff and protestors in December. In April this year, amid growing controversy among many PVCC faculty over the methodology and implications of the G&H study, MCC revealed that it had hired one of the G&H Consulting team members to be an assistant to Chancellor Jackie Snyder.
At the beginning of a faculty/staff community meeting called to discuss these and other issues, Snyder announced that a GLBT anti-discrimination clause was soon to be put up for consideration before the Board of Trustees cabinet, and said she felt optimistic that it would finally be approved.
Turning then to the other main concerns raised by the protest and G&H report, Snyder expressed faith in her audience, most of whom she knew well from her old job as PVCC President prior to Franklin. "I don't believe that this is a racist group of people, one way or the other. I mean that," she said earnestly.
 Jackie Snyder |
"We may not want to hear it, I don't want to hear it. But there is a perception in the community that Penn Valley is a racist place. I have heard that from the community, over and over and over. How can we change that perception?"
She said regardless of objections to the methodology and presentation of the report, and though the recommendations made by G&H were mostly ideas that had already been under discussion for some time at Penn Valley, the challenge to faculty and staff remains.
"Students come to us, and they don't understand the college climate. They don't understand what it's like to be in a college class, what the expectations are, how they ought to behave, all sorts of things that we're working with. So a teacher that has an expectation of this this and this, they may receive something else. I'm just saying that's a part of the mix of dealing with this issue--the fact that a student has never been in a college classroom."
Snyder said inner city community colleges across the country are facing identical challenges, but perhaps the best way to begin meeting them at PVCC is to acknowledge that change is required.
"It could be the value of this, is that we've struggled all out here together. And we've said we're not happy. We're not happy with the way things are going, one way or the other. So how do we get to the next step?"
And she emphasized that the G&H report may be worthwhile in helping to ease external community relations, even if it has been internally disturbing.
"One of the things I think is valuable, is the consultant who was used is a person who is respected in the community," she said. "And if that person said that there's nothing here bad, that is a tool that we can now use. So, as painful and awkward as it has been, we have nothing to hide. We can go forward."
Three hundred sixty days on, does Ferguson, the protest leader and still President of BSA, feel it was all worthwhile?
"I'd say yes, for the most part," she answers, taking time out from a BSA meeting. "I don't want to jump to any conclusions because I don't know all that's going on in the process now… The awareness of students feeling they can actually do something is being known. I think that's really good, not only letting Penn Valley know, but letting our Chancellor know, we have concerns like everyone else. At the end of the day you still want to be treated with respect. And I'm thinking that slowly, we're working thru the process."
Ferguson adds that especially for her personally, "It was worth it. In the beginning, I had my doubts, and I kinda had my suspicions - with anything like this you're going to have those. But every day, every moment since May 7, 2007, I've regretted nothing. I don't regret the day, at 11 o'clock I walked out of class to walk around the school, to hand a letter to the Chancellor, to let her know, this is what's going on, this is how I feel. Since May 7, my whole life has changed, not only as a student, but as a member of leadership. I've been places, talked to people that I never thought I would've talked to. Faculty members are like, I'm so glad you did this. I'm so glad that you actually stepped up. Students are like Oh! You did that? And they're thinking it's somebody - but I'm just a regular student, just like them. And it's regular people that do extraordinary things, so I don't regret anything. Nothing at all."
Copyright 2008 Metropolitan Community College