How Laguna College of Art + Design is Dealing with its Racism

(My letter to the Board of Trustees)

To the Board of Trustees, Laguna College of Art + Design:

After the events of the past month, I’ve reached a point where the thought of further dealings with Laguna College of Art + Design disgusts me, so I’m writing this letter not as a plea but as a long, relieved look in the rear-view mirror. It’s also a next step; I will certainly share this letter as widely as possible, having already responded to a reporter from the Times Orange County.

My experience at LCAD was basically this:

Spring classes were going along with the usual energy and harmony when COVID-19 hit the campus like a bomb. Suddenly, we were teaching via Zoom from our homes instead of in person. The disruption was considerable, so as the weeks went on, you kept us informed of every step you were taking to keep the classes as normal as possible for the fall term. The emails flew so frequently that I came to expect each of them to be related to the virus and its complications. So when another dropped in with instructions for a Zoom meeting, I barely read the title — “Accountability Something Something” — and logged in at the appointed hour to get the plan for virus-teaching in the fall.

It was clear from the start that something terrible had happened and this meeting had nothing to do with COVID-19. The President of the college was there, the Chief Operating Officer, various administrators, and more. People’s faces were anxious. A Black American teacher, Larissa Brown Marantz, was holding back tears. When enough people had logged in, the host began to speak in a grave tone: a staffer from the college had posted a message of support for the Black Lives Matter movement on LCAD’s Instagram page and inadvertently put a hashtag on it that, in her words, was so awful she could not bear to repeat it. The post itself, in support of BLM, was beside the point; the college’s social media community was loudly testifying to serious emotional damage over the hashtag — so serious that alumni were bewailing their history with such an institution and declaring that they could not recommend it to potential students anymore. The administration was worried about LCAD’s survival. The floor was given to Larissa, and she spent the next hour accusing the college of systemic racism, eventually expanding her remarks to America as a whole. Offering no specific examples, she talked about white privilege and she stated, out loud, as we all sat listening, that she had no voice. At one point she brought our attention to a poster of MLK, Jr. behind her on a wall. She quoted his much-admired words — people should be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. “Things have to change,” she said. “Something has to be done.” And what might that be? We needed to immediately start judging people by the color of their skin, she explained. Scholarships, student admissions, faculty and staff hiring practices, all had to be based on race in order to overcome racism. Add to that another round of sensitivity training for good measure.

The meeting left me irritated. At a minimum, Larissa’s Orwellian absurdities are an affront to the mind and conscience of anyone who, like me, aspires to reasonable, moral thinking. Worse, I was being implicated as an agent of racial oppression — specifically, of depriving the very voluble Larissa Brown Marantz of a voice — by virtue of being born white. I pondered whether to respond, and ultimately decided it was time to exercise my own voice. I put my thoughts into an email and sent it to the office and Larissa with a request to forward it to the other Zoom attendees. In my email, I asked for specifics on the change Larissa was demanding, and I defended the college:

“LCAD is a functioning, thriving school where students are being trained to succeed in a fabulous industry. What about this needs to change?”

This in contrast to a Facebook post by Larissa in which she perpetrated the very libel that was threatening LCAD’s existence:

“This week I came to the harsh realization that the college I’ve taught at for 12 years is racist and is reluctant to change.”

(In a subsequent post, she would brag that her libel had gotten LCAD trending on Twitter in California — not in a good way.)

In the wake of my email, I took the trouble to inquire with an Associate Provost about any racist offenses LCAD had perpetrated in the past. Without violating student confidentiality she cited two complaints in her years on the job; neither involved racism.

You know what happened next. To make a long story short, Larissa received the email and took to Facebook once again to slur me with a demeaning racist stereotype. I responded to her, demanding that she apologize and post my email in full so that readers could judge it for themselves — if Larissa wants to lay down sensitivity rules she has to play by them. (N.b., I do not follow Larissa on social media; her post was brought to my attention by individuals familiar with the circumstances who were able to easily identify me as the target of the slur.)

A few days later, I was fired.

Mine is the third scalp in this sordid episode, after the staffer who posted the pro-BLM Instagram message and the president of the college. It is probably also the last, as the dissenters on campus — students and teachers alike, many of whom have contacted me in secret — have learned yet again that if they want to survive, they must remain mute.

I see the college is now implementing numerous remediations: an Equity and Inclusion Council, a Restorative Justice professional, scholarships to increase diversity, equity and inclusivity, a student forum to engage in meaningful, change-driven dialog, a Fine Arts Exhibition to raise money for BLM organizations, a robust diversity, inclusivity, and sensitivity training program for staff, faculty and Board of Trustee members, and an outreach program to attract a more diverse Board membership.

I said at the opening of this letter that I’m looking back on my brief experience with LCAD in relief; thanks to its boundless cowardice, I won’t have to deal with a single one of these unspeakably dreary, infantilizing, and wasteful endeavors!

Another note: I am copying Larissa on this letter in the spirit of openness that is now sorely lacking at LCAD. Let’s face it: Larissa knows what you are, and you know what she is. You both know what you’ve lost in me and what you’ve taken to your bosom in her. Until now, no one has had the opportunity or the guts to say this while both of you are in the room. So, fiat lux.

Finally, let us recall: What was the ghastly hashtag that started it all? Ah yes… the all-inclusive, equalizing, diversity-embracing “All Lives Matter.”