Matt Driscoll: Racism complaint at University of Puget Sound reflects work we all have to do

Last week, the University of Puget Sound named 55-year-old Isiaah Crawford — a gay, African American man — its president elect.

On July 1, Crawford will become the small private school’s first black president.

Crawford’s selection as president follows a number of important outward strides UPS has made in recent years toward improving diversity and inclusion on campus. By most visible metrics, UPS has been a school working hard to be the type of institution that reflects what our society should be at its finest — equitable, open and kind.

Which is exactly what makes the alleged events of Feb. 17 — nine days before the announcement of Crawford’s hiring — particularly troubling.

According to Omar Wandera, the 40-year-old vice principal of a Bay Area charter high school, 45 of his students visited UPS that day to get a feel for the university. It was one of three campus visits the students made to Puget Sound-area schools during a five-day trip, which also included stops at the University of Washington in Seattle and Seattle University.

At UPS, however, Wandera says his students, which he describes as roughly 60 percent Latino, and 40 percent other minorities, experienced acts of subtle and “overt” racism that left him so angry and disillusioned he filed a complaint with the school.

In a letter sent to the university, Wandera says some of his Spanish-speaking students overheard UPS students say things like, “get this trash out of here” while they toured the campus. The letter also details what Wandera describes as an especially alarming visit to the campus bookstore — an experience he says included store employees racially profiling his students and instructing them not to touch the merchandise because “their hands were greasy.”

All of it, Wandera believes, was at least in part racially motivated. He wants an apology and public statement from the university, and, pending the outcome of an investigation, the dismissal of the bookstore employees in question. In his letter, which he later published to social media, he says he could “never in good conscience” send a student to UPS now.

“I’ve never experienced something like this at any college campus I’ve visited. Hands down, it’s the worst experience I’ve ever had,” Wandera told me.

The charter high school Wandera helped found over a decade ago — Leadership Public Schools in Hayward, California — serves “predominantly low-income students,” he said. Most will be first-generation college students, which is why trips such as the one to UPS are important.

UPS Academic Vice President and Dean Kris Bartanen said the university received Wandera’s complaint Feb. 18. She described school officials as “deeply troubled” by its contents, and tells me an investigation was immediately launched. The findings, she says, will be made available “fairly soon.”

Meanwhile, the school’s current president, Ron Thomas, and Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Diversity and Inclusion Michael Benitez have each penned emails to students, faculty and staff.

In Benitez’s email, sent March 2, he described the situation as “extremely challenging,” “and one we are determined to address straightforwardly and honestly.”

Benitez noted the importance of maintaining “appropriate confidentiality and fairness for all parties involved” during the investigation,” and cautioned that “social media accounts of the situation cannot provide a full account of what occurred at the time or what has transpired since.” He also wrote: “It is clear that our visitors experienced harm and the university as a whole must be accountable. We recognize that these allegations of racism reflect how these campus visitors experienced our campus community.”

In his email, Benitez says UPS has committed to completing “the investigation currently in progress, determine findings, and implement appropriate actions and follow-up,” and requiring staff to complete cultural competency training workshops “in order to strengthen our ability to be the fully inclusive and welcoming campus we aspire to be.”

Of the roughly 2,600 students who attend UPS, one-quarter identify as belonging to one or more racial minority group. As the president of the Black Student Union, Rachel Askew is one of them. In the past year, she’s been involved in several campus protests aimed at giving minority students more voice, and she told me what the visiting high school students say they experienced feels unfortunately familiar.

“It’s not surprising and shocking to people of color that go here. This is our everyday norm. It’s part of our Puget Sound experience,” Askew said of her reaction to the compliant. “This isn’t new.”

But while the bubble of UPS might provide a direct and convenient lens to view problems of race and diversity, the issues at the school are no more remarkable than the challenge we face throughout American society — and certainly throughout our institutions of power. In many ways, what the official investigation turns up will be secondary to the difficult reality the alleged incident already makes clear.

That’s not giving UPS a pass. It’s admitting the full scope of the challenge, and the school’s place in that work.

“We’re always trying to be better,” UPS Dean of Students Mike Segawa explained. “The issue that we struggle with around diversity — like race, classism, sexual orientation, transgender issues — are very much issues that society is also struggling with.”

UPS Professor Dexter Gordon, who serves as director of the school’s heralded Race and Pedagogy initiative — a collaborative community effort to confront racism — says the university has made real strides in recent years while also acknowledging it hasn’t been nearly enough.

“The general sense and tenor of the report, I think, is a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done on the Puget Sound campus,” Gordon says. “And it’s symptomatic of broader society.”

It’s work school officials appear willing to earnestly engage in.

The hard part — not just for UPS, but for all of us — is taking the action beyond talk.

This story was originally published March 4, 2016 at 9:41 AM with the headline "Matt Driscoll: Racism complaint at University of Puget Sound reflects work we all have to do."