An Open Letter to Seton Hall University From A Black Alumnus: Keep Your Award

I was a student at Seton Hall University the first and second time I was tested for a sexually transmitted disease (STD). I traveled alone from our campus in the quaint village of South Orange to sterile-looking public health offices a short distance away in Newark because I wasn’t comfortable letting the medical staff on campus know I was sexually active. I wasn’t prepared for the reaction I assumed some staff would have upon learning my sex partners included women and men.

Seton Hall’s commitment to its Catholic faith created the type of learning environment where talk of sex, sexual health, and sexuality lacked — unless, of course, the talk hinted at what one shouldn’t do or be. But, like me, so many students were sexually active on campus. Some, like me, needed to be treated for STDs. And some had abortions. This is a reality that does not minimize students’ ability to graduate and begin vocations as leaders in their field. It signifies what it means to be a growing person, coming of age on a college campus, in a time when sex, sexuality and sexual health are no longer vices-to-be-dismissed, unless, of course, one finds oneself stifled by puritanical ideas.

I was soon to return to Seton Hall for a weekend centering the experiences of black alumni sponsored by the Black Alumni Association. The Association invited me to participate on a panel focused on policing and black communities. They also let me know I would receive their first Young Alumni of Excellence Award. I was humbled and thrilled enough to publicly share the news until the decision was made, per the University, to rescind the award because of my ostensible stance on abortion. My peers organizing the weekend events on behalf of the Black Alumni Association were unaware of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ rules for awarding people with opposing viewpoints.

Interestingly, my affiliation with Planned Parenthood was cited. I assume someone read my bio, which includes me having been listed as one of Planned Parenthood’s 2015 99 Keepers of the Dream. I assume that distinction was enough to somehow validate my stance on abortion, which no one at the University has yet to ask me. I am pro-choice and I do support women’s efforts to exercise their reproductive rights and I do affirm the necessity of spaces where people, like me, can seek sexual health support and services. And I would rather maintain my convictions than receive an honor from any repressive institution whose ideologies counter people’s rights to make reproductive and sexual choices best for them.

I am sure my support of women’s reproductive rights, pro-choice stance, and desire to see increased access to sexual health services are but a few of several positions that don’t jive with Seton Hall’s theological and ideological worldview. I am unapologetically queer and not heterosexual. I am a pro-feminist writer and media maker who understands that women have agency and own the choices they make regarding their bodies. I am a black queer pro-feminist organizer in this current iteration of a longstanding Movement for Black Lives, which affirms the autonomy of all black people, especially those who exist on the edges of the margins like cisgender and transgender women. And I am a graduate of a theological seminary trained to question oppressive dogma, a thinker who learns best by inviting interrogation, not offering declaratives.

The paradox of attending and graduating from a Catholic university that touts itself as maintaining a Catholicity that is “a call to action and a commitment to building a life that is both faithful to the past — and open to the future” is the fact that it has lost itself in its past. And while it is open to the future, it is clear that such openness is rhetorical only.

Universities are spaces where students should be encouraged to think freely, to dissent, and to forward new knowledges. I may have given Seton Hall too much credit as a space of “higher” learning when I matriculated because I assumed it valued those basic ideas. I assumed its Catholicity was expansive enough to hold divergent positions and its commitment to fostering a well-rounded education firm enough to value intellectual freedom. But, alas.

I could not be more proud to lose an award because of a commitment to what is just. I could not be less proud of Seton Hall University for its refusal to do justly. And I hope black alumni hold Seton Hall University accountable for its willingness to unwelcome any its own because of differences in perspective.