Sunday, April 24, 2016

An Open Letter to The Hampshire Community

Dear Hampshire College Community,

As a group of concerned faculty and alumni of color, we write this letter out of love, concern, and solidarity. Hampshire College is in panic mode again. To be honest, it seems like the College has been in perpetual crisis since its inception. The magnitude of the current earthquake has compelled the institution to respond. But the College’s past articulations of a “theater of concern” are insufficient this time.  In the past, administrators adeptly performed anti-racist and anti-sexist discourses, but lacked the ability and commitment to institutionalize structural transformation. The ripple effects of inadequately addressing these issues has taken its toll.   This has resulted in cyclical eruptions and disruptions that are forgotten as soon as they are tamed.  Nevertheless, the institution is seemingly imploding.  Do we let it disintegrate?  How, if at all, do we respond?  Must those of us who are most vulnerable and exploited within and outside of Hampshire, step in to shore up the crumbling facade of justice?  Or do we take this moment to “retrofit,” reprioritize, and realize the school’s publicly touted, but rarely realized, social justice ideals?  

Our purpose in writing this letter is because we’re fatigued, dismayed, and deeply troubled. We believe that students, staff, and faculty of color should be applauded for articulating their suffering and pain, and for laboring tirelessly to retrofit this campus.  While we cannot address the myriad issues that surfaced on account of the community campus meeting, the cataclysmic gathering set-off alarms, alerting us of the numerous institutional fault lines, neglect, and policy failures.  Nevertheless, amidst these shortcomings, students, faculty, staff, and other members of this learning community, have been sacrificing their health and well-being, caring for the heard and unheard.  We admire the dedication and love they have exhibited in the past and in the current moment.  But, we also understand that many of them have been exploited for “caring” for others, for being underpaid caregivers, teachers, administrators, and staff members.  Without a doubt, the college has survived out of this exploited labor and has abused their love and commitment.  Exploitation continues; it’s not a phenomenon relegated to the colonial period.  And Hampshire, with its discourse of equity, fairness, social justice, and sexual and gender inclusivity, has failed to acknowledge and adequately address these contradictions and forcefully interrogate the intersectional aspects that structure the aforementioned populations.  This community -- and by extension, the College -- is often in denial; it aims to erect a bubble whereby the College is immune to history and social formations.  In this “magical bubble”,  workers are all equal; all genders have equivalent power and pay; all queers are equally vulnerable, all students have analogous privileges, and all faculty have the same protections and resources. This is simply absurd.

To “keep it 100% real,” the faculty involved in writing this letter are unable to sign it. Because, while we are courageous -- much like the current students who are raising their voices on campus (as well as those who are afraid to speak) -- we fear reprisal, alienation, ostracism, and our job security, among other things.  While we certainly “inhabit” space in the college, and are strategically featured in promotional brochures and public events, many of us are faceless, powerless, and disregarded members of this community. We have been disrespected for so long; our voices and demands have gone continuously unheard and ignored, and we feel demoralized and rather pessimistic.  The future seems uncertain.   But in the spirit of our ancestors, we have to remain optimistic.  The current earthquake is an opportunity to retrofit and build a more solid foundation that addresses some of the aforementioned systematic and structural inequalities.   

This is a critical moment where the ripple effects of neglect, white guilt, and shallow, but theatrical acts of sympathy, haunts Hampshire’s construction of past and current events. By employing a false narrative of equality and sameness, Hampshire intentionally fabricates a sense of historical deniability.  This approach also foments a deterministic view of the past, while also creating a dangerously essentialist account that fails to consider the nuanced and complicated processes of historical alienation and inequality across multiple communities. The current eruption proves that intricate histories have been flattened or strategically forgotten. Addressing this requires that the College fundamentally reshape its curriculum.  This means that race and racism courses must be mandatory for all students.  This challenges the cultural ethos of the college in its emphasis on individual agency over one’s studies, but this approach has largely contributed to current and past crises.  By extension, this means that more resources must be allocated to implement this requirement, including the retraining of staff, faculty, and administrators.  As alumni, we are grateful to our Hampshire faculty who effectively taught us to engage with the complex intersections of race, sexual difference, and social power.  This has been an invaluable component of our Hampshire experience, but it is essential that such perspectives be mandatory rather than optional for all students.  Such a requirement enables students to challenge the false constructions of race that have circulated on campus for too long, especially as it relates to “multicultural” frameworks.  Failing to do so has contributed to the current emergency and contributed to a swirling of confusion around important, 21st century realities.  It has also contributed to the undue burden of some faculty, staff, and students to always feel positioned to be “race educators,” causing exhaustion, animosity, and extreme burnout.  This abuse of labor contributes to their already long litany of responsibilities, producing more exploitation in an environment that already underpays and undervalues its employees.

A race and racism class is only the beginning.  We want to express our steadfast support for the expansion of resources to the Cultural Center, the Wellness Center, and other vital offices that off-set the struggles of surviving in a predominantly white college. We strongly believe that the job responsibilities for the prospective Director of the Cultural Center are untenable, appalling, and unsustainable.  No one should be expected to undertake such a vast and vital range of institutional responsibilities. The current job ad as described underscores how reliant Hampshire is upon ill-treated labor.  But this exploitation is endemic to Hampshire. Staff and faculty, as a whole, are misused and under-compensated, but some more mercilessly than others.   Employing five full-time staff members at the Cultural Center will help support the campus in its mission to adequately meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.

Overall, we demand that Hampshire confront the ever-changing and terrifying racial realities of the present moment. The burgeoning tide of hate and xenophobia directed at Latinx communities, the high incarceration rates of Black and Brown bodies, the constant targeting and killing of racial minorities by state and police officials, the unjust persecution and murder of Muslims within and outside the United States, and the cultural erasure and violence perpetuated against indigenous communities, are just some of the unfortunate realities that we must collectively address and stand against. This also applies to the egregious hate crimes targeting transfemme members of color in the Hampshire College community.  The Black Lives Matter movement requires us to wake up, shift our priorities as educators, and recommit ourselves to advancing an updated curriculum.  It is imperative that Hampshire College immediately retrofit its racial paradigm.