Power Concedes Nothing Without Demand: A Response to Student Sanctions at Marquette University
“I am not a token for the university…”
“It feels like we have zero faculty support…”
“Money speaks louder than us…”
“I should have support…”
“I am the girl with a weird name…”
“I should have professors that look like me…”
“I want the experience of being a student too…”
“They second guess my experience…”
“I am tired…”
“We just don’t want to be a trauma narrative…”
- Anonymous Conversations with MU Students of Color
On August 25, 2022 students of color at Marquette University held a demonstration at the new student convocation. The demonstration was a student response to the prolonged experience of institutional negligence. Students of color have been left with no option but to express their frustration and anger at the empty rhetoric of a university that continues to champion diversity in the name of its HSI initiatives, the growth of Urban Scholars, and the most diverse incoming undergraduate class in its institutional history while actively failing to support its possibility by way of resources.
The Fall 2022 semester opened in the wake of resignations that left the Office of Engagement and Inclusion empty seated. To date, the Director of Inclusion and Belonging, the Coordinator of Cultural Engagement Programs and Services, the Office Associate of Engagement and Inclusion, and the Director of Black Student Initiatives sit empty. Further, the Counselor/Psychologist/Coordinator of Services for Black/African American Studies was vacant but has in the last week been removed from the employment website. These roles are the most imperative resource network for students of color on campus, although by no means exhaustive. The provost and the upper administration have noted that the vacancies are due to resignations and are in the process of being filled, which while true, fails to appreciate why the lifeblood of the only space on campus for the engagement of all underrepresented and marginalized populations has little to no staffing. Indeed, there is a structural void of support for students, faculty, and staff of color on campus. A void that points to a deep-seated racial history at Marquette University that continues to fail to address why racism is so rampant.
The university initiated fall convocation championing a diversity that is ill warranted. Even after students of color drew attention to the failed lack of support, the university insisted in its post convocations statement, which reads: “We are deeply committed to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion on campus. As a result of our ongoing efforts, 30% of our incoming first-year class identifies as students of color and we believe our overall diversity this fall will be at an all-time high, along with the most faculty and staff of color in our history as well.” The insistence does not capture the perils of being a person of color at Marquette University, a predominantly white institution. Foiled by the Jesuit mission, diversity at our campus is aimed at addressing “a society that continues to struggle with the legacy of separate and unequal as a practice.” While it may be true that diversity on campus is at an all-time high there continues to be a failure to address how the university intends to support said diversity. At this moment we are plagued by a lack of resources for student, faculty, and staff success, resignation of exploited staff, tokenized and overworked faculty (myself included), and a sustained culture of racial and ethnic insensitivity. A closer look at the statistics is painfully disparaging. An “all-time high” of 29 % students of color, 16.8% faculty of color, 22.3% staff of color is only an accomplishment against a contextual backdrop of a predominantly white institution that continuously obstructs the possibilities of its own diversity.
In response to the student demonstration the university activated its student conduct violation process. Each student was delivered an incident report, underwent a hearing, and ultimately sanctioned for their actions on August 25. The student conduct violations reflect the opinion that the primary order of business is discipline rather than restorative. The sanctions continue to produce harms that fail to ameliorate what are very real and serious concerns about support for students of color on campus. In her role as witness to three of the hearings, Dr. Julissa Ventura describes the experience as traumatic and humiliating. The student conduct hearing process was an inquisition. It failed at its pedagogical potential. There are many ways the university could have responded to the demonstration. We have a wealth of resources on campus to talk about restorative justice, including a Center for Peacemaking. However, institutionally the response was correctional, rendering students’ criminal subjects in violation of policies that mirror the perils of living in a world with an entrenched racial caste system, that as Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow (2010) notes, “denotes a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom” (12). In this vein, Marquette University harms its students by continuing to opt for measures that flag the importance of profit over human dignity.
The incident reports cite the cost of the event ($30,000), the use of profanity (primarily the use of the work ‘fuck’), the unwillingness of students to be quieted, and the violation of the demonstration policy (a policy which to date has not been deployed for sanction, see the history here) as incidents that failed to comply with appropriate student conduct. Student conduct policies are continuously heralded as important for the health and safety of the Marquette community, but as the history of some of these measures indicate, it is not clear whose safety and health the university is really trying to protect. While I am not denying that student actions were in fact infractions of student conduct, the fact remains that their sanctions do not track the reality of their lived experience. The university by focusing on the incident itself fails to appreciate why the incident occurred in the first place. In fact, by understanding the broader context, our students’ actions were reasonable and appropriate under the pressures of being on a campus that continuously disregards their needs while tokenizing their presence in the glaring absence of the practice of the Jesuit mission. In this context, who is really going to be the difference? Somehow, we are supposed to believe the difference is found in sanctions, hearings, and penalties that do not map commensurately to the continuous disregard that the university has for the support of people of color on its campus; a disregard felt on all levels of the institution.
The priority of the university (reflected in the manner it has acted toward students) echoes a culture where the main focus is not the well-being of students, but rather the enactment of punitive measures. The call of the student conduct process is to “act with integrity and compassion; to promote a culture of learning, appreciation, and understanding; to take responsibility to confront difficult issues and solve problems; and to behave in ways that reflect care, respect, and honesty.” Yet, the message in this context is clear, if you are student of color, silence is the only road to respect, appreciation, and understanding; a message quite reflective of our milieu, a message that reminds us that to be a person of color on Marquette’s campus or anywhere in the United States is to be continuously beholden to violence. The student conduct hearing process was nothing short of traumatic and not reflective of a model of care, respect, or honesty.
Moreover, the labor of counseling, emotionally caring for students, and guiding students through the process has fallen disproportionally on the shoulders of faculty and staff of color. Dr. Julissa Ventura, an assistant professor in the College of Education and Dr. Sergio Gonzalez, an assistant professor in the College of Arts & Sciences (currently on sabbatical) tell an all too familiar tale at Marquette University: faculty of color bear the brunt of diversity initiatives, teaching diverse topics, and acting as the embodiment of diversity itself, while also being the thin net that catches students when the university acts against their interests, time and time again. It is in fact no surprise that the office of Cultural Engagement and Inclusion would find itself with so many vacancies. We too are exhausted and pushed to the brink of our emotional capabilities.
The university released its sanctions to students on September 21, 2022, granting only five days to appeal the decisions. The penalties ranged from probation to suspension in abeyance — a category which is not clearly defined for students — in conjunction with fines for damages, an apology letter, the development of an educational program on the demonstration policy, and community service hours to the university (a charge which does not account for the service these students already do as student leaders on campus). Continuously highlighting the failures of students to abide by the free speech conditions of student conduct, the university sent a very clear message: your voice only matters to the extent that we can control it, a richer experience on campus is only possible if you stay in your place and keep quiet, while swallowing the pains of being a token. Only then you will make it out alive. Moreover, the decision to fine students that are already facing economic precarity on the basis of being “disruptive” is deplorable. While a $300 fine might not mean much to an institution that charges astronomical amounts for tuition, such a charge places a painful dent in the life of students who might not know where their next month’s rent will come from. Furthermore, the safety net of roles that could support said conditions continues to sit empty.
I ask you Marquette, how can you parade around a social justice mission, growing diversity statistics, values of equity and inclusion and in the same breath sanction the very students that make a glimmer of these possibilities real on your campus? You, I, we, have failed our students with this response. Where is their apology? Where is your sanction? Who will hold you accountable? I certainly know one thing, punitively exiling our students of color (many of whom are democratically elected leaders on our campus); that is to say the very students that make your diversity mission possible, is not the way to go.
I anticipate that the administration will respond to these events by insisting that they have in fact tried to engage in meaningful dialogue with students, that the new student convocation was a big expense, and that students simply violated student conduct policy. In response, I call on all of us to consider how this event is part of a broader pattern of Marquette University’s institutional racism that plays out in its disregard, negligence, and tokenization of people of color on its campus. Our students deserve better than this. All of us deserve better than this.
Let us not forget: “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
-(1857) Frederick Douglass, “If There is No struggle, There is No Progress”
