The Hamilton Community Will Confront Racism, With or Without Hamilton College
By Saphire Ruiz ’22, Student Assembly President
On May 30th, 2020, President David Wippman sent out an email to the campus community expressing his sentiments on the racist murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police Department. His email did not contain the phrase “Black Lives Matter”, cited only white historical figures who themselves were the subject of anti-racist protests as civil rights advocates, and made no tangible commitments to action.
Following an outcry from hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and alumni, he and the College issued an apology a couple of weeks later for mishandling their response. With it, President Wippman made some good first steps to atonement: he committed to more Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, an annual $200,000 allocation from his discretionary fund to DEI, and most relevant now, the creation of an Advisory Council on racial justice composed of members from across the Hamilton community.
I remember thinking that, just maybe, genuine change was coming to an institution that has historically fallen short on issues of racial justice, ranging from the betrayal of the Oneida Nation shortly after the founding of Hamilton-Oneida Academy (quickly renamed, and with no Oneida student ever graduating), to the College’s flagellation of the majority of the student body who dared to write a letter to Congress in opposition to slavery in 1837, to only beginning (a very slow) integration of Black students after World War One, to the total refusal of the College to divest from Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, which eventually led to the College President’s resignation, to widespread and largely unanswered-by-administration protests in 2015 against both Hamilton’s and peer institutions’ current formulations of systemic racism — many concerns of which remain at Hamilton today.
Hamilton has a long history of open, tolerated racism. Despite missteps, both prior to and within the apology email, President Wippman’s Advisory Council gave me a sneaky feeling I have long sought to suppress out of countless disappointments when white people in positions of power, specifically Martin Luther King Jr.’s “white moderate”, make promises to do better and learn from their mistakes: hope.
My hope was shattered when, only a few days later, Professor Shelley Haley (the longest-serving Black woman professor at Hamilton), the Black and Latinx Student Union, and the Feminists of Color Collective, all dedicated individuals and organizations to the cause of racial justice, were explicitly denied spots on the Advisory Council in favor of individuals hand-picked by the Office of the President. In particular, I continue to question the motives to reject Council membership to the most prominent Black-led racial justice student organizations at Hamilton. Why?
President Wippman has yet to make a direct written public response on this matter, despite requests by students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members to do so for more than 8 months. Nor has he made any direct response in writing to a single one of our requests in the initial all-campus email on January 25th. Nor has he made any direct response to a follow-up message of 7 pages with justifications and reasoning, and a set of 6 enumerated requests, delivered on January 26th. We requested that the Advisory Council take a vote on our requests; it appears they did not. Instead, the body responded in 3 paragraphs and without directly responding to a single one of our numbered requests, either an affirmation or denial.
The message from this is clear: our community’s and elected representatives’ concerns do not deserve a direct, public response from the President of the College unless of course these concerns are expressed in a way that threatens its precious reputation as a “socially conscious” and “diverse” institution, as was the case over the summer.
What motivates this institution to substantive action?
It isn’t polite emails. It isn’t meetings. It isn’t Student Assembly and organization statements. It isn’t community support, expressed in a petition with almost 1,700 supporters. Ultimately, it is not respected for us as co-equal members of the community, with valid interests and concerns. We’ve tried all of that for years. So when we as a community receive emails like President Wippman’s on February 15th about “Shared Responsibility” which do not respond directly to any of our concerns and simultaneously invite our participation in a feedback process with no power whatsoever over the implementation of recommendations short and vague enough that I am confident the excluded groups and individuals could have developed them before the end of last summer, I fear that the Office of the President’s primary (though not exclusive) motivation is to rebuild Hamilton’s tarnished reputation for donors and prospective students.
I am increasingly fearful that a perspective of growing the endowment for the endowment’s sake, decreasing the application selectivity rate for the selectivity rate’s sake, and ultimately growth for growth’s sake, has corrupted the educational and community mission of the College, whether by design or accident.
President Wippman’s Advisory Council wasn’t made for the community. It was made for the College’s reputation, and bears little resemblance to the “Shared Responsibility” he speaks about. If it were for the community, President Wippman would have made sure the process was led by racial justice organizations, with binding power and a mandate to exist in perpetuity and to create detailed policy. Instead, we got a hand-picked (though still respectable) group excluding prominent advocates, with no real power, that produced 4 pages of extremely brief and vague recommendations over 8 months, and that is expected to be quickly dissolved once recommendations are finalized.
It is clear from the College’s fifth email in less than a month requesting participation with his Advisory Council that President Wippman’s efforts to gain the legitimacy of community engagement in this pseudo-democratic process are failing. The overwhelming majority of on-campus community members are boycotting the Advisory Council as an act of protest.
Together, the Hamilton Community is expressing its widespread and deep anger, frustration, and disappointment with President Wippman and his Advisory Council. We are saying that if this institution desires to behave as a business rather than the proclaimed “Hamily”, we are more than ready to act accordingly.
That is why Vice President Kavya Crasta ’21, Vice President-Elect Eric Stenzel ’23, our SA cabinet, and I terminated our office’s planned collaboration with the Marketing Office for Black History Month to make the point that we will not contribute to the College’s business marketing model as a “forward-thinking” institution if it refuses to meet that
expectation in practice. Our collaboration with the College’s Marketing Office will only resume if significant steps are made to meet community demands.
On Thursday, February 11th I felt hope once again. That is when the community-led Audit & Action Council had its first meeting. In this only legitimate Council on racial justice at Hamilton, we envision a Hamilton College that not only acknowledges racial injustice but actively empowers its most dedicated racial justice advocates and organizations to take action. Councilmembers expressed their deep desires for direct collaboration with a wide array of organizations and departments, community-involvement and transparency in every step of our process, and tangible action steps at every juncture. We will be releasing minutes after we approve them at our next meeting.
The Audit & Action Council is based on democracy, equity, and justice. Every substantive decision we make is subject to a 2/3rds majority vote of members. To cover the extensive policies we are developing, multiple working groups will be created, each with opportunities provided for even more community members to be active and ongoing participants in developing each of their respective proposals. Numerous feedback mechanisms will be created, both in live sessions and written testimonies. We further invite the community to send its concerns and questions about the Audit & Action Council’s function to sa@hamilton.edu.
This body’s sole accountability is to the community — it exists at our community’s discretion, not any President. Even myself.
Since the start of last summer, while I have become intimately aware of how Hamilton has sought to prioritize other interests above the needs and demands of its most marginalized groups, I have also found the tremendous power of each of you: the Hamilton Community.
We came together to demand that Hamilton say “Black Lives Matter”, and we won. We came together to demand tangible investments by the College into DEI, and we won. We came together to raise money for the summer’s uprising, and we made over $30,000. We came together to boycott both the initial and current feedback sessions, and we now stand here with one question: what next? What is our path to a future wherein every member of the Hamilton Community is safe, comfortable, and proud to be here? We start with the Audit & Action Council, and the numerous community groups ready to do the work.
This is our collective story to tell. I invite you to pick up the pen and start writing.
For a full timeline of this past summer’s events regarding racial justice at Hamilton, an FAQ, and more, please see this document composed by the previous Executive Board of BLSU, which included the author of this article at that time.
