“Nothing About Us, Without Us:” A History of Holding Western Accountable

How Black students at Western Washington University have worked to make campus more equitable

By Kiana Doyle, Olivia Hicks, Luisa Loi and Brendan Prior

March 15, 2022 — WWU Capstone Story

The spring of 1968 brought the sun to Bellingham after a wet winter accompanied by a historical shift in Western Washington University’s commitment to Black students. “Nothing is promised that is not performed,” said Robert D. Brown, Western Washington University’s former academic dean, in response to a list of demands made by the Black Student Union that May.

The demands, addressed to former Western President Charles J. Flora, voiced Black student concerns about racism in class curriculum, descrimination rampant in campus culture and the exclusion of Black students and faculty from positions of influence. Motivated by the national fight for civil rights, the advocacy stemming from the Black Power movement, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Black students gathered to protest the university’s role as a racist institution.

Little did they know, more than 50 years after punching demands into a typewriter, Black students at Western would be voicing similar ones.

In June of 2020, a group of Black students imagined a future where Western was better for themselves and others. This time, rather than using a typewriter, students discussed concerns using a text message group chat that morphed into a formal document. Selome Zerai, the founder of the Black Student Organization — the umbrella organization made up of student organizations like the BSU, National Society of Black Engineers chapter and more — sat in her apartment typing up the demands over calls with other Black students.

The 22 demands, three asked of the Associated Students Executive Board and 19 asked of university higher ups, outnumbered the six demands made in 1968, as well as a varied list of demands made by Black student clubs at a sit-in forum in 2018, but touched on similar issues of student safety, health and education.

“Every demand was something we didn’t have before and needed, and either tried building ourselves or was promised previously and never given,” Zerai said over email.

Demands — whether typed in an official letter to the administration, voiced in community forums or written via opinion editorials in The Western Front — have repeatedly been made over Western’s history and have consistently acted as a check on the university’s progress in creating student services, representation and curriculum that serve the unmet needs of Black students on campus.

Part of that accountability is making sure, as Zerai and Brown said, promises are met. However, the task of holding universities across the nation, including Western, to their promises has fallen on student leaders who take time from classes, extracurricular activities and jobs to ensure progress is made. Passing the baton of progress to a new class in the span of a few years leaves a need for leaders who aren’t temporary, said Xyanthe Neider, the teaching and learning director at Whatcom Community College and an antiracist education consultant.

Since 1968, student organizations on campus have taken action to hold the university responsible by threatening political action and dissociation from the university’s Ethnic Student and Multicultural Centers.​

Alumni intervention was one threat included in the 2020 BSO demands’ concluding section titled “OUR PROMISE.” The BSO said it would “take future steps of retribution, including contacting Black alumni, and university donors,” if the university failed to meet the demands within the time period requested.

Along with promising to contact alumni and donors, the authors of the demand list said that failure to complete the demands would prompt the BSO to separate from the Ethnic Student Center, the Multicultural Center and the Associated Students, as the BSO said its members were tired of being tokenized by the three student organizations.

“I feel like ‘our promise’ was the only way our words would have been taken seriously at that point in time,” Zerai said.

Following the threat of separating from the ESC, MCC and AS, the AS Executive Board took action by either tracking progress on university demands or completing the demands within their power. Although only tasked with completing three, the AS has advocacted for and tracked progress on the majority of demands listed.

Turning Representation Into A Priority:

Displayed in towering letters near the entrance to Western’s Multicultural Center reads a quote by South African disability rights and youth activists: “Nothing about us, without us, is for us.” This demand for participatory representation is echoed through decades of demands from Black students on Western’s campus.

In as early as 1968, BSU members demanded more inclusion in decision making processes that affected them in a letter addressed to Flora.

Today, the university has collaborated with Black student organizations on campus, from offering campus-wide events with famous Black figures for Black History Month to working on forming a Black Student Coalition space. However, communication and the completion of other actions still remain obstacles, said BSU President Ermias Hagos.

“Ultimately what it comes down to is the action,” Hagos said.

From taking direct action within their power to monitoring the board of trustees and faculty progress, Western’s AS is checking off demands in order to represent the non-white student population. Defining religious holiday accomodations, including mandating a minimum 12-hour extension policy that, if not met, would penalize professors under the collective bargaining agreement anti-discrimination code, remain one of the two demands completed that focus on the representation and acknowledgment of Black students, according to the AS Executive Board website.

According to Laura Wagner, the AS vice president of sustainability, the first non-AS demand is the closest to completion. The demand asked for school-wide recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month and Juneteenth with speakers and artists hosted by Western.

This isn’t a new demand. In 2018, the BSU asked the university at a sit-in forum to “fund an annual Black History Month event, seeing as the institution has generally overlooked Black History Month for years.”

As of 2021, there were over a dozen events on campus and online led by Black figures in art, history and politics to celebrate the holiday, as outlined in the Black History Month schedule. While the AS has celebrated Black History Month for two years, they note that the celebration of Juneteenth may be muted due to the fact that it typically falls during summer break. According to Wagner, the demand is not listed as complete because “there needs to be a continuous follow-up to ensure these are celebrated every year.”

According to Western’s housing website, the Black Affinity Housing program began in fall of 2021 and is located in the Alma Clark Glass Hall — named after the first Black student at Western. The program gives space and housing for BIPOC students and promotes activities centered around building up the Black student experience.

Those living in Black Affinity Housing have options for early move-in that provides students with opportunities including a trip to Western’s boathouse on Lake Whatcom, speaking with members of Bellingham who are focused on the Black community and other events to make BIPOC students feel more at-home at the university. The opportunity for early move-in partially addresses the BSO’s first and fifth demands of the university for a startup week and a safe space to relax for Black students.

However, not every Black student is included. According to their website, the Black Affinity Housing Program only allows for 40 students to enroll, when there are 457 Black students at Western as of fall 2021, according to Western’s enrollment statistics. This statistic however, does not take into account how many of those students are freshmen.

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Located in Alma Clark is a mural designed and painted by Black students. According to Hafþór Yngvason, the gallery director at Western, people seem to appreciate the mural, but he also made it clear that this wasn’t exactly what was asked for in Western demand #7, which asked for art pieces by Black artists in their respective departments.

“But everybody is now asking for this. BIPOC artists, Black artists and Native artists particularly. So there is real interest in that,” Yngvason said. “The demand, you know, is there, it’s just a lack of funding that’s started.”

The last representation demand was Western demand #4, which discussed implementing a “Black Friday” event hosted before Thanksgiving break at Western, with the funds from the bookstore, Zoe’s, The Atrium and all stores on campus going to the BSC and other Black student organizations. It is not clear if this is legally possible, but the AS has requested this to be addressed by the university, and no further progress has been made as of this time.

Of those demands relating to representation, six of the seven were at least partially addressed by the university, but only three have been applied to students outside of the Black Affinity Housing program, according to the AS Executive Board website.

One completed demand that has taken center stage through news coverage and community, faculty and staff backlash, is the renaming of Huxley College of the Environment to the College of the Environment. The decision came after students voiced concerns, backed by College of the Environment student senators in 2019, and the addition of the name change to the BSO’s 2020 demands pushed the name change to the forefront of the administration’s attention. The students cited Thomas Henry Huxley’s scientific work as racist and in 2021 the Legacy Review Taskforce, a collection of appointed students and faculty responsible for evaluating campus building names, recommended that the university should consider renaming the college. At a meeting on Dec. 9, 2021, the board of trustees voted to remove the Huxley name from the College of the Environment.

While students like Francis Neff, a former College of the Environment student senator involved in the name change, said that the board of trustees moved quicker than initially thought to implement the name change, student complaints of the Huxley name date back farther than 2019.

Kate Darby, an associate professor of environmental studies with an emphasis on environmental justice at Western, said she became aware of student concerns surrounding the name as early as 2015, soon after she began working at Western. In 2017, student discussions mentioning the name change were common in meetings about the creation of an environmental justice minor.

“The consensus at that point was to refer to the college as ‘College of the Environment’ in anything related to the EJ [environmental justice] minor,” Darby said in an email.

The College of the Environment wasn’t the only name the Legacy Review Taskforce recommended be reconsidered by the university. In the university’s announcement that the Huxley name would be dropped from the College of the Environment, it was disclosed that two of the residence halls under review — Haggard and Mathes Halls — would keep their names and the Viking name and mascot would be revisited.

The Legacy Taskforce recommended Mathes Hall, named after Edward T. Mathes, who served as the president of Western from 1899 to 1914, be renamed because of its namesake’s ethic and racial differences in his scholarship. The taskforce said Mathes’ work “conflicts with the University’s mission.” Additionally, Haggard Hall’s name change was recommended by the taskforce because of Western’s president from 1939 to 1959, William Wade Haggard, participating in a skit about Indigenous people and “claims of practices of hiring discimination,” according to the taskforce’s report.

Those college name changes weren’t the only buildings demanded by the BSO. The naming of the new residence hall after the first Black student at Western, Alma Clark Glass, met part of another BSO demand calling for the two new buildings on campus to be named after Black figures. The other new building on campus, the Interdisciplinary Science Building, does not have a historical name.

The College of the Environment name change and other changes that speak to student representation have taken time and “constant advocacy from students,” Wagner said.

Student leaders are often responsible for responding to and fixing demands when their primary role is to be students first, said Sargun Handa, the former AS senate pro tempore.

“I think it’s disappointing how little effort the administration is making and how much responsibility they’re shirking off and putting on student-leader shoulders,” Handa said. “At the same time, as a historically anti-Black institution that has hurt and harmed a lot of Black students, the least AS can do is work on the BSO demands and give them the reparations that they deserve.”

Former Western student Cameron Harris, who graduated in 2012 and continues to attend BSU meetings whenever possible, echoed Handa.

“It’s pretty unreasonable and unrealistic to [drop the responsibility] to create all of this change on students’ backs,” Harris said.

Neider argues that while institutions will listen to students, the population on college campuses operates like a revolving door, leaving the need for advocacy from people in long-term positions of power.

“Students graduate and leave and a new crop comes in and the university’s like ‘Phew…we’re done with that, onto the next,’” Neider said. “They can just kind of forget about it, pretend like this is an anomaly rather than a pattern that has emerged.”

That pattern, Neider said, is consistent across eras and institutions.

“I’m sure that if you went into the library and looked at other Black freedom movements on campus and you looked at other demands, they’re [the 2020 BSO demands] probably pretty close to what was demanded 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 60, 70 years ago,” Neider said. “And if you look across institutions and the demands that Black students have given at Michigan, at WSU, at Oregon State, at UC Berkeley — at institutions across the nation — you’re going to see similar lists.”

However, other forms of accountability and other actors on campuses can help support students so that long-held complaints don’t go unacknowledged or uncompleted for years or decades, Neider said. Alumni, specifically large donors, can act as a tool that students can wield against the university along with faculty for sustained change.​

Western Faculty Use Their Own Skills to Aid Black Student Service Needs

Assistant professor Nini Hayes of the Environmental Studies department and Elaine Mehary, an administrative assistant and education and social justice minor, are supporting Western students in their own way. The two led a study in 2021 — one of four commissioned by the university’s Social Justice & Equity Committee — focused on the needs and experiences of Black students on Western’s campus. Using a 52-question survey with 50 Black participants, the research project aimed to understand the challenges that Black students face during the pandemic.

“The results of this work are clear,” the introduction of the four studies stated. “Our students from minoritized populations, and in particular our Black students, are frustrated and suffering under the current structure and culture of our university. Many of these students’ basic needs are not being met and they look to the university for support that would help them achieve basic academic goals. In order to meet students’ needs, dramatic changes are needed in terms of the structure and function of university programs.”

The findings echoed many of the BSO’s 2020 demands by calling for immediate critical needs such as better access to mental health and identity group support with a focus on racial trauma, anti-racism training paired with anti-Blackness awareness for staff, faculty and administration, the creation of an initiative for Black student retention and success, and the reallocation of funds from university police to Black health support.

The second of the 2020 BSO demands mirrors the needs listed in the study. The demand calls for the defunding of the campus police and a reinvestment of that money into the recruitment and retainment of Black mental health counselors.

Cries for defunding police departments spread across the country after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020. Black Lives Matter’s website calls for two specific actions to be taken as part of defunding the police: divestment from criminal punishment systems and investment in Black communities. The second BSO demand calls for just that with the redirection of funds into Black mental health counselors.

This is not the first time that a Western Black student club has requested Black mental health counselors. In the 2018 demands, both the BSU and African Caribbean Club came forward separately to advocate for the addition of Black counselors in Western’s Counseling and Wellness Center. In March 2019, the center gained Sislena Ledbetter, a Black woman, as the executive director for counseling, health and wellness, but since then, there have been no other Black mental health personnel to join the Counseling and Wellness Center.

The BSO 2020 demand acknowledges the hiring of Ledbetter, but also explains how this is not enough to provide adequate mental health support for Western’s Black students: “Too often, sole Black counselors and Black faculty are tasked with addressing all of our needs. Racism is too consuming of an issue for this burden to fall on just a few.”

The demand specifically called for the recruitment of two more Black mental health counselors by the end of the 2020–21 academic year, using money allocated from the University Police Department to fund the recruitment and retainment.

After June 2020, both the overall budget for the UPD and specific public safety police dropped by a little over $100,000, but then increased by roughly $90,000 between June 2021 and June 2022 according to a public records request from Feb. 18.

As far as the search for more Black mental health counselors, Western has proposed permanent funding for one new position titled “African American Retention Counselor,” according to a 2021–23 Biennium Internal Budget Proposal Narrative. The proposal said the goal of investment in this long term position is to increase Black and African American student retention and graduation rates, as well as lead to an increase of students of color and their satisfaction at Western.

According to the AS Executive Board website, the university also lobbied for $3.4 million at Western Lobby Days to procure funds that would go toward BIPOC mental health counselors.

The second BSO 2020 demand may not be complete yet, but there are a number of demands that are listed as complete on the AS Executive Board website. The three demands listed under the Associated Students section of the demands all have detailed updates for actions that the AS has taken to resolve them, but two of three are not currently listed as complete.

The first demand calls for the creation of a Black student space. BIPOC students on campus have had to fight time and time again for spaces on campus where they can meet and have a safe space for their communities, said Vernon Damani Johnson, a recently retired political science professor at Western.

Johnson has witnessed what it has taken for change to be made at the university since he was hired in 1986, including the Ethnic Student Center’s creation in 1991.

Johnson recalled student action, led largely by Native American student Michael Vendiola, which led to the formation of the ESC in the early ’90s after the student of color population grew from 388 students in fall quarter of 1980 to 755 students in fall quarter of 1990 and they needed more space, according to enrollment documents from 1980 to 2002.

“They started demanding an Ethnic Student Center, and I guess they felt like they weren’t really being heard and a couple of them started sitting in front of the office of President Kenneth Mortimer,” Johnson said. “By the end of the week there were probably 67 students in there, so they were taking up a lot of space, so finally they got a meeting with the president and were able to make their demands, and he got it.”

Shortly after, the ESC was established, and since then, the center has continued to expand. Now, there is a space on the fifth floor of the Viking Union that is being transformed into what will be the Black student space.

BSO demands two and three under the AS section address funding for the BSC. The second demand calls for the abolishment of the AS Employee Development Fund and the lobbying trip to Washington D.C., totalling $9,200, and defunding all travel of the AS Executive Board. The AS website lists this demand as complete, and to address the third demand — creating the Black Student Coalition — the AS reallocated the Federal Lobby Day funding into the Black Student Coalition.

The AS website lists two other demands concerning student services as complete: demands eight and nine, which call for anti-racism and anti-Blackness training for students and staff.

Since this demand was made, Senate Bill 5227 has been passed. The bill mandates public institutions of higher education provide “a professional development program for faculty and staff with the purpose of eliminating structural racism against all races” starting with the 2022–23 academic year. For students, the bill mandates “a program on [Diversity, Equity and Inclusion] and antiracism for all students using data and promising practices from the faculty professional development program and campus climate assessments” starting with the 2024–25 academic year according to the final bill report.

The AS Executive Board website states SB 5227 came directly from the university’s lobbying team at Western Lobby Day and Western Intersectional Lobby Day.

Not all demands concerning student services have been resolved, however. For example, the twelfth BSO demand, which calls for Western to end its contract with the campus food service provider Aramark, is currently an incomplete student service demand.

The demand stands by Shred the Contract, a Western student-run campaign that officially launched in fall 2018, which advocates for an end to the university’s contract with Aramark and requests a self-operated dining system in its place.

According to the website of STC, the dining service contracts with hundreds of prisons and jails across the country. STC also references multiple accounts of worker mistreatment and calls out Aramark for buying cheap, unhealthy food from big food corporations.

The twelfth demand is incomplete for now, since the contract expired in September 2021 and was extended until September 2023 by decision of Western’s Vice President for Enrollment and Services Melynda Huskey.

How have Black students influenced changes in admissions, recruitment and curricula?

Many first-generation students come from low-income families without a tradition of going to college, which often leads to lower GPAs. These students are often BIPOC, according to a research paper published in 2014. Claiming that GPA ignores the challenges Black students face in college, the BSO demanded the reevaluation of all major applications.​

According to Department of Psychology Chair Jim Graham, the department has seen remarkable changes over the past two years. He said they are working with the university to get more resources to increase accessibility instead of maintaining a competitive application process.​

Graham said the application used to be GPA based. Starting next academic year, the admission process will take a more holistic approach, weighing student experience, past academic success and diversity, equity and inclusion work. The criteria for admission will still include GPA, but without the same importance as before, he said.

The department also plans to create a Bachelor of Arts to run alongside the Bachelor of Science. Graham explained BAs can be more accessible as they aren’t as science-dense as BSs.​

“We’re trying to think about how to increase access, even if the administration won’t give us more faculty or more sections to be able to teach that sort of thing,” he said.

Graham said at the earliest, the program could be completed by the 2023–24 academic year and see approval by fall 2022.​

Another curricular change at Western was the removal of the edTPA — a standardized exam that is biased against BIPOC student teachers — in 2021, which the Associated Students lobbied for. The state passed House Bill 1028 that summer, eliminating the test.

According to Vice President of Enrollment and Student Services Melynda Huskey, the exam is still available at Western as a formative tool, but it is no longer mandatory.​

The BSO also demanded the development of an African American Studies program taught by Black staff and implemented within the College of Ethnic Studies — a college that Western discontinued in 1978. Institutions that offer an ethnic studies program include the University of Washington and Washington State University.​

About 50 years ago, the College of Ethnic Studies existed as a cluster college — a small college within the university that can specialize in one field of knowledge. The other two cluster colleges were Fairhaven College and Huxley College of the Environment, according to a 1993 study conducted by Western grad student Maurice L. Bryan Jr..

CES was born in 1969 thanks to a push from BIPOC students and faculty, who were concerned with the lack of culturally relevant courses offered at the university. The college also included an African-American Studies program, Bryan wrote.​

According to the study, CES disbanded in 1978 due to the following reasons: three deans in three years; high faculty turnover — including faculty who contributed to the creation of the college; budget reductions; general bias against the concept of ethnic studies.​

Finally, the university decided to distribute ethnic studies courses to other departments while keeping Fairhaven and Huxley. The paper reports that the third dean of the college, Jesse Hiraoka, criticized the decision by saying the college was being held at a higher standard compared to the other cluster colleges.​

Students of color have been asking for the reintroduction of the college for decades, according to Handa, former AS senate pro tempore. This fact is part of the reason why there was some discontent with the transition from Honors Program to Honors College, which Handa said students of color in the Honors Program never wanted.​

Handa is a member of the Honors Students of Color, an organization founded in 2019 to support honors BIPOC students. In February 2022, HSOC published a list of demands to address racial injustice within the Honors College, which Handa — author of the demands — said has failed to support its students of color.​

Western proposed the reintroduction of ethnic studies in the 2021–2023 operating budget request submitted to Governor Jay Inslee in September 2020. In May 2021, the Washington Senate passed the allocation of $1,016,000 to create the Ethnic Studies Department, according to the 2021 operating budget. The funds were lobbied for by students at Western Lobby Day and Western Intersectional Lobby Day in 2021.​

The state will disburse these funds in yearly payments of $500,000, said Huskey, the vice president for Enrollment and Student Services. Additionally, she said, they hope to have a program ready by 2022–23, and they’re currently discussing location options.

However, the funding does not require the creation of an African American major, as there is no mention in the state’s final operating budget.​

“Essentially, this means the university could develop an Ethnic Studies program without an African American Studies major,” said Anna Corinne Huffman, AS director of Legislative Affairs. “Which is why they may need pressure from students to continue the progress of this BSO demand.”​

The BSO also demanded the creation of a mandatory cross-cultural course within each major, prompting the Committee on Undergraduate Education — a subcommittee of the Faculty Senate — to develop a new GUR program, “Power, Equity and Justice,” also known as PEJ, which CUE proposed in May 2021.​

PEJ would replace the preexisting Comparative Gender and Multicultural GURs, according to a 2021 CUE report. The program hopes to better teach how power, justice and equity affect people’s experiences while also looking at how groups resist racial injustice.​

CUE recommended creating two separate GUR requirements that would consist of three courses but without an increase in GUR credits. One course would focus on global perspectives, while the other two would represent the power, equity and justice requirement. One PEJ course could also be fulfilled by taking a PEJ course in the major.

According to Brooke Love, chair of the Academic Coordinating Commission, the ACC has put together a task force that specializes in issues of equity, diversity and justice. The taskforce will continue developing the PEJ plan for GURs while consulting with advisors, students and student leaders to get feedback and assess the plan’s feasibility, according to a 2022 ACC report. The taskforce should revise the plan and document the completion of these tasks by the end of the 2021–22 academic year, the document says.​

In the meantime, the ACC, the senate and UPRC will identify resources to fund the program, develop training for faculty engaging in teaching PEJ courses, and discuss hiring more BIPOC faculty with faculty and administration, the ACC report says.

However, Love said, PEJ might debut in the 2025–26 academic year because each department will need time to develop or revise their courses.​

Graham, chair of the psychology department, said the department is working on changing curriculum requirements, as the department offers multicultural courses in the lower division level, not the upper one. Additionally, he said multicultural courses are not required in the behavioral neuroscience program at all.​

Graham said they recently talked for the first time about the possibility to add a class about cultural diversity in behavioral neuroscience. He also talked about the idea of having particular concentrations with classes that are linked together. For example, a clinical counseling concentration would require students to take a cross-cultural counseling class.​

When it comes to the demand for the diversification of authors used in class curricula, Huskey said individual faculty are responsible for the class curriculum, which is reviewed by the individual departments and colleges.

Only the Department of Psychology responded to a request to be interviewed for this article.​

Graham believes the only way to hold faculty accountable would be to develop a department evaluation plan to determine whether a candidate for tenure or promotion acknowledges the social context in which the knowledge they teach was created. He said the psychology department has been working on an evaluation plan for about two years now, something they started before the BSO released the demands. Graham however said the BSO made that necessity more apparent.​

“The BSO was really instrumental in making it personal to a lot of folks in the university to pull us up to a different level of accountability,” Graham said.​

The BSO asked for the review of the hiring process of all faculty within the College of Science and Engineering, College of Business and Economics and the Departments of Psychology and Anthropology due to what the BSO saw as a lack of Black faculty in these particular departments.

The need for diversity among faculty has always been an issue at Western, as shown by the fact that an increase in Black faculty had been demanded more than once in the past. In 1968, the BSU asked for the recruitment of Black instructors, particularly in the physical education department. In 2018, the organization asked for more Black faculty in all colleges. In 2022, HSOC asked for more faculty of color in the Honors College.

Harris, a former BSU member, believes part of the reason why there aren’t many Black instructors on campus is because Bellingham is a predominantly white town. According to the 2021 U.S. Census, only 1.6% of the city’s residents is Black, while white residents represent 83.2% of the population.

“I think it’s hard for students, but even more so for Black staff, to come to a town like Bellingham, and to live their life as a person of color,” Harris said. “There’s not the same community or access to different ethnic businesses — things like that — that they would find in the places they come from.”

Retired political science professor Johnson also pointed out that it is especially hard for Black people to find community in Bellingham compared to other POC communities, such as LatinX and Indigenous communities, which are more prevalent in the area. To truly make up for this added difficulty, Johnson said there should be monetary incentive and compensation.

“If you really wanted to keep Black faculty at Western, basically you would have to pay them more,” Johnson said. “That would create jealousy among other faculty, but if you’re a scarce commodity — I mean, gold is a scarce commodity in the world and that’s why it’s more precious and that’s why it costs more, diamonds even more, so that’s the way the market works.”

The number of Black faculty on campus has seen a fluctuating increase over the past seven years. While a 40% growth is important, it is only a slight change from 10 faculty members in fall 2014 to 14 in fall 2021 — according to data obtained through a public records request.

Graham said there have been positive changes in the psychology department when it comes to diversifying faculty. Before the release of the BSO demands, the hiring process was the same as it is now, but its implementation has changed, he said.

Last year, the department looked for candidates with the ability to mentor BIPOC students. Graham said state law doesn’t allow for hiring based on race or ethnicity, but they made it work because they look for: active involvement with diversity, equity and inclusion work; the skills to mentor BIPOC students; teaching and research experience.

Associate Chair Jackie Rose said they also discussed the idea of reaching out to certain organizations to find new hires, or reaching out to other institutions to inform future BIPOC instructors they’re looking for new hires.​

“Change in academia is always painfully slow. And that’s frustrating,” Graham said. “But I just hope [the BSO] are able to look back and recognize the impact that they had and are having on the university.”​

The Past, Present and Future of BSO Demands​

The Black student population at Western has continued to grow, as does the list of demands. Since the 1960s, the list of demands has grown, but action has been pushed forward primarily by students throughout history.

Both Zerai and Hagos have voiced their recognition of Western’s recent progress.

“They’ve met a good amount of them,” Hagos said. “There was around 10 of them and they met again when the BSC was created. There’s a space on the fifth floor. [There’s a] Celebration of MLK Day Juneteenth, all that and the new building the Alma Clark Glass Hall. It looks really nice. Those types of things. They’ve definitely taken steps to meet those demands. Not all the demands have been met. But at the same time, I think they could do a better job for sure.”

The issue comes with the history of demand responses and treatment of Black students on campus.

“We Black people have been agitating in our Black Freedom Movement since slavery, and what happens every time is the people in power, the white ruling elite, always say, ‘it’s not your time yet,’ to like, ‘That’s too niche. We can’t address your problems because that’s too small of a population we’ve got to deal with everybody you know,’” Neider said.

Neider also discussed how effective equity can work on campus, and points to Historically Black Colleges and Universities as examples.

“A lot of what they are doing right has to do with how they are shoring up the identities and protecting the potential of the Black students on campus,” Neider said. “We don’t do that at our historically white institutions.”

Amy Westmoreland, director of the Multicultural Center, said her position is an exciting new addition to Western that people have supported. But her position, Westmoreland said, is just one part in the process of making the university more equitable.

“I think it’s important to note that the development of this position and the Office of Multicultural Student Services is one step of many that need to be taken,” Westmoreland said. “This is a continual process. Striving for equity is a continual process. The work is just starting, and it requires heavy lifting from everyone.”

While progress has been made, the demands aren’t all completed yet, as shown by Wagner’s most recent AS updates. Demands related to student services, representation and curriculum have been requested in the past, and their sustainability will rely on consistent accountability — most of which has and will fall on students.

“Through time they [demands] haven’t changed much, students are always asking for more representation on campus in faculty and staff, for better support and for racism to be taken seriously,” Neider said. “This is a pattern of behavior across time, across eras, across institutions and across the nation that, I would argue, we no longer can afford to ignore.”