Diversity and Inclusion for all, or a “fortunate” few?
The cultural zeitgeist in the wake of continued police murders of Black Americans is one of justified ardor. A shift in how actively we demonstrate our values, and the way that we as a culture allocate veneration, long overdue, is no longer being requested politely. All over the United States it is being demanded and even taken by force as local Black communities and allies refuse to accept statues of individuals whose values are antithetical to our own. This fervor has been broiling in Black communities for decades, but undeniable racial injustice and a global pandemic forcing us all to watch and listen are shifting public opinion in an unprecedented manner. Rice University has the opportunity to be on the right side of progress and further this shift from passive to active by meeting the demands of Rice’s Black community.
On Juneteenth 2020, current Black students released a set of demands to the Rice administration, as a guide for a shift to tangible action over items they consider important for their well-being and mental sanctity in the face of anti-Black racism. We write as a group of current students and alumni invested in supporting the reasonable and objective demands given by some Black Rice students on our own campus, as we know and reaffirm that all of these demands have the potential to improve the Black Experience at Rice.
The Black Experience at Rice has been clearly noted and recognized as a unique one since, for example, 1972, when an article titled “The Life of the Black Student on the Rice Campus” was published. The tangible ideas that Black students of the 70s dreamed about to improve the Black Experience at Rice are the exact same tangible ideas being expressed as demands in 2020. Considering that for example, the need for a nonresidential Black House and increased admittance of Black students have been expressed both in this 1972 article and by current 2020 students, it is clear that the Black Experience at Rice of the 1970s has eerily similar parallels to the experience Black students have presently. Upon release of the list of demands on Juneteenth 2020, there came a wave of support from current students, alumni, administrators, faculty, and even parents of Rice students.
We do not want to go down this path of an endless cycle of task forces, meetings and more meetings that do not go anywhere and are impotent with no real power to make meaningful changes. We are well aware of university administrators’ tactics to use endless meetings and task forces to bottle up and exhaust our legitimate concerns and demands. We demand action for a reason: all other opportunities and possibilities to resolve our reasonable requests have been ignored. We demand several items which we expect Rice can do without difficulty and especially since other universities have already made similar efforts:
The statue of William Marsh Rice must be removed and relocated elsewhere on campus. This statue represents a bygone era and a past that Rice has openly admitted to not supporting. We do understand that this statue for several alumni and students represents fond memories and therefore we are not asking for its destruction. Instead we demand that the statue be relocated and placed elsewhere on the campus, instead of the central and prominent location it now occupies. Additionally, we demand that Willy’s likeness removal should occur from the marketing materials and other promotional items Rice uses to promote the university, as this type of usage can be viewed as endorsing the horrific history of owning slaves and membership in the slave patrol here in Houston. Honoring the namesake because of his financial contribution, regardless of where his fortune came from, implies our priorities are financial rather than moral. The original Rice charter as written states, “White inhabitants of Houston and Texas” and we have moved on from this charter as an institution, so our iconography should as well.
We demand that Rice must increase the number of Black students accepted to our university. We will work with the administration to provide a reasonable amount of numbers, but we believe for far too long, the university’s level of Black students has remained stubbornly low because of a lack of interest and focus on increasing representation and can be changed. We can name four Black students that transferred, often specifically to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s), or took time off from Rice in order to remedy feelings of isolation and lack of support for Black students within their major. Now, with the pandemic, the time is perfect for Rice to increase the number of Black students. Rice already cut its tuition this past summer (possibly as a method to make sure it retains the students it currently has), so we are aware that the administrators are concerned about admissions for the fall and spring. We are willing to work with the President’s office with regard to hiring and promotion of Black professors, staff, and administrators in order to begin steps towards ending systemic and institutional racial inequity.
We demand that Rice in conjunction with the Ion in the 3rd Ward start to invest more and to agree to HCEDD demands. We demand that Rice provide increased visibility and highlight the myriad and numerous accomplishments by Black students that it absolutely must recognize if the administration truly wants an inclusive and equal-footing campus for all students and alumni. Our alumni and students are willing to work with the Multicultural Center, the PR office and other offices on campus to provide feedback on how we would like for appreciation and promotion.
We demand that Rice consider how they can make Black students feel appreciated and comfortable on our campus by setting up a non-residential house on campus which while is specifically set aside for Black students will not in any way preclude or prohibit any students of any ethnicity or gender from entering and socializing. However, we do believe that it is necessary for Black students to at least have a safe space from a majority white campus. Other comparable peer institutions have already made a much, much stronger effort for diversity and inclusivity, for example Vanderbilt University’s Bishop Johnson Black Cultural Center.
We demand and will not accept bad lighting on our ID photos. This is not a trivial demand. For far too long we have had significant issues with our photographs that are displayed in our student ID’s. Though it seems simple, something as mundane as photo lighting has the power to convey whom exactly a space is intended for. We demand that Rice hire more Black counselors and therapists at Rice Wellbeing and Counseling Center. We need Black counselors who are educated to handle racial trauma which White counselors cannot understand.
We demand increased diversity training for all student leaders, especially based on what occurred at Halloween 2019 when several Rice students thought it would be comical to don ICE costumes in the middle of Trump’s attacks on undocumented immigrants. This incident further solidified and made us aware that all our students must take racial sensitivity training and become more culturally competent. We also demand that affinity groups be even more prominent at the residential college level during Orientation week.
We want to make it very clear- we are not attacking anyone or attacking anyone’s past- rather we want to move forward into the future together. The decisions made in the past were made by White men, much as our country was founded; but we cannot accept and will not accept further decisions made by a minority of administrators; rather we demand to be a part of the new Rice. We are not blaming anyone for the decisions of the past, we understand that what occurred in 1912 is something for which Rice has made some effort to atone, but we believe these efforts are not sufficient and in fact have been unnecessarily delayed. We are open to dialogue but only if there is a concrete time frame and agreement to our demands.
A statue, in many ways, represents regression. It is the representation of a historical figure, rigid and frozen in time. The fact of the matter is that we have outgrown the conditions of Rice University’s founding. The original charter and its explicit racism and exclusivity no longer fit us as an institution. Rice’s fortune planted the seeds for the University true enough, but the incredible institution of higher learning that we have is not what Rice intended. William Marsh Rice would prefer that our Black students be working in a field than working in a lab. Our university today is much more inclusive and diverse than what Rice and the founders set out to create, and if Rice himself wouldn’t be proud of what we’ve created, then there is no reason for his likeness to be displayed with any semblance of pride on our campus. The Black community is moving into the future, and we implore you to join us there by signing our petition and supporting our efforts.
A list of our supporters:
6100Main: Fashion of Rice University
American Association of University Women
ASTR* Magazine
Basmati Beats
Civic Duty Rice
Indivisible Houston
Period@Rice-BCM
Pure Justice
Rice ACLU
Rice Creative Society
Rice Left
Rice Muslim Student Association
Rice PRIDE
Rice University Mock Trial
Rice University Young Democrats
Rice Urbanists
Rice Women’s Resource Center
The Rice Players
KeShawn Ivory and Gautam Nayer, Ph.D. are Rice alumni. Kendall Vining, Milkessa Kalbessa and Shifa Rahman are current students at Rice University. All are members of The Coalition to Remove Willy from Rice University, a public Facebook group.