ARTICLE ON RACE RELATIONS

The Cincinnati Enquirer

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Front Page, by Cliff Peale

If the resignation of the University of Cincinnati’s top African-American academic official has done one thing, it has forced discussion of race out into the open.

 

Since Ron Jackson resigned under pressure Nov. 12 as dean of the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, students have held two forums with UC’s top executives and one protest at the center of campus as prospective students walked by on admissions tours.

 

“Students aren’t really talking to faculty enough, and the administration doesn’t talk enough,” said Olutobi Akomolede, a second-year student from Mason. “These are all solvable things.”

 

Senior Byron Hutchins, a Walnut Hills High School graduate, said he hasn’t felt unwelcome at UC because of his race. But he still believes it’s a divided campus.

 

“I just feel like we’re very segmented, and not just by race,” he said. “We’re segmented by academics, we’re segmented by socio-economic class. If we could just see what’s happening all across campus, it would be better.”

 

Student complaints appear to be divided into two groups.

 

One asserts that Jackson’s departure signals a “hostile atmosphere” for black students, professors and administrators at UC. To that group, Jackson’s departure is a signal that African-American students and professors won’t get the same chances to prove themselves when things go bad. They say UC forced Jackson out after forcing out Police Chief Michael Cureton, also an African-American, each there less than two years with rocky tenures from the start.

 

Jackson arrived at UC to confront a $7 million budget deficit in Arts & Sciences, a difficult job for any administrator.

 

A larger group says the lack of awareness about racial differences is the bigger problem. What’s most common, they say, is differences that no one understands and no one wants to confront.

 

New Provost Beverly Davenport and Vice President of Student Affairs Debra Merchant have taken the lead on the sensitive subject.

 

Other than issuing a sympathetic statement on the day of the student protest, high-profile President Santa Ono has not been heard publicly on the issue. Ono did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Some students including Akomolede say they’ve personally talked to Ono about race on campus.

 

The bottom line remains this: African-Americans are only 8.2 percent of undergraduates on UC’s main campus and are 4.2 percent of full-time professors. Less than half of the African-American students on main campus graduate within six years, compared to about 63 percent of students overall.

 

Merchant said UC will not ignore feelings by students that they are facing an unfriendly atmosphere at UC. “Some may feel that way. I can’t discount that,” she said.

 

She said one student who came to her was the only black student in her first-year learning community – groups of students in the same academic program – and was constantly asked about stereotypes.

“It was tiresome. She felt uncomfortable,” Merchant said. “That defined her freshman experience.”

 

“We don’t want to over-engineer the population, but it’s important to have a critical mass,” she added.

 

'My role is to make sure that ... people are treated fairly'

The university’s efforts to increase the number of black students and professors on campus have been halting. UC says the pool for African-American professors is extremely competitive.

 

The stakes are high. If people of color avoid the main campus north of Downtown, it would hurt UC’s effort to burnish its national profile and earn a place among the nation’s elite public universities. That could impact everything from UC’s national ranking to its ability to increase tuition revenue, critical in this day and age.

 

Justin Christopher, a UC senior from Winton Hills, said black faculty members need attention. He said the biggest problem with Jackson’s resignation was that UC didn’t support a dean who was earning $240,000 a year.

 

“I’ve stayed here, but I think something needs to be done,” said Kenneth Ghee, an Africana Studies professor who has been at UC since 1985. “My role is to make sure that, while I’m in this environment, people are treated fairly.”

 

Jackson faced withering criticism from some professors over his management skills, and a cartoon with crude racial stereotypes was circulated around his college earlier this year. The cartoon sparked much of the conversation, and Jackson said after he resigned that he remained bitter about his treatment by his alma mater.

 

“I think what bothered a lot of people was the response (to the cartoon),” Akomolede said. “A lot of people feel they didn’t do enough.”

UC had hired a consultant to work with Jackson for months before he finally resigned. Behind the scenes, UC officials insist that they did everything they could to support Jackson before his problems with faculty finally overwhelmed him.

The low numbers of black professors or administrators makes a difference, students say.

“Sure, I’d like to see more black professors,” Hutchins said. “But just because they’re black doesn’t mean ... that they’re instantly an amazing professor.”

UC makes progress on some goals; others remain elusive

Since Jackson’s resignation, UC is scrambling to invest more money in getting minority students on campus and gather data on progress in its diversity plan adopted in 2011.

 

This week, the university announced at least $440,000 in new scholarships for students of color and women. UC also has hired people in enrollment management and the College of Medicine to recruit under-represented populations.

 

Interim Chief Diversity Officer Bleuzette Marshall said UC is spending more than $1 million on different diversity initiatives around campus, in addition to the scholarships. Marshall says she still is compiling results of the diversity plan.

 

She said UC has met goals for its pipeline of applicants of color – about 12 percent – and plans to conduct a “climate survey” next spring. On other goals, though, such as the graduation rate, it is nowhere close to the goal.

 

Students say there are only isolated instances of overt racism. The issue is that some black students don’t feel like they belong.

Akomolede, who is involved with student government and with the UC chapter of the NAACP, emphasized that he is speaking for himself, not for either of those groups. He said people are talking, which should help improve the atmosphere on campus.

 

“There’s definitely going to be some issues regarding race everywhere,” he said. “That’s just the world we live in. I think everybody needs to see some real change, and everybody’s ready to make that happen.” ⬛