In an interview with Leslie Essien (Initiative Outreach coordinator), Aleks Babic (senior), Carol Cothern (librarian and ’88 CCE alumna), Bob Williams (economics professor), Sekinah Hamlin (Multicultural Education Department), Holly Wilson (Africana Community), and Jorge Zeballos (international student advisor), the members of the Multicultural Education Department discussed the organization’s purpose, goals, and history.
Q: How does the MED work? What do you do?Hamlin: The MED is comprised of a couple of programs, the Native American Program, the Africana Community, and the GLBTQA Resources program. Then we also have the Latino Initiative. Within our department, we have the Multicultural Leadership Program, of which Aleks is one, and we also are the department that is joined with the Anti-Racism Team. One of the goals of our department is to be proactive in educating our community on how to become an anti-racist and multicultural community and institution. We also work with faculty development

Q: Tell us about the initiative under which you operate.

Cothern: I know that there were people on campus who were working to establish an anti-racism initiative back in the late 1990s, and by 2002, we formed an Anti-Racism Team and started training sessions. And the original team had faculty, staff, students, both on-campus and CCE, as well as community members.

Hamlin: In January of 2002 the board of trustees voted to make Guilford an antiracist, multicultural institution. When they voted, it was an unfunded initiative, but since the Strategic Long-Range Plan [was implemented] it has become funded. We are strategic priority 3.2 in the SLRP, and with that we are working to institutionalize antiracism and diversity within our college community. Meaning that everything we do is with an anti-racist lens, but it’s not just about only racism. It’s also about heterosexism, able-ism, sexual identity; it’s about all of that. And so, we’re institutionalizing that. So one of the things we are going to do is expand our workshops and other programs. Right now, Ken Hull, GLBTQA Resources coordinator, and Kathryn Schmidt of the sociology and anthropology department have been leading Safe Zone workshops and Heterosexism workshops. And heterosexism and antiracism workshops will serve as the foundation workshops that we’ll provide as we move forward. And all of this will be part of our diversity plan.

Q: What kind of services do you offer?

Hamlin: I think mainly what we do is educational. And it’s about how we see ourselves in doing our personal work and how we engage with community and how systems of oppressions work and how they need to be corrected.

Zeballos: Part of the work, although the ultimate goal is to change the institution, the work must begin at the individual level. So we look at how policies like curriculum, hiring, and retention are all affecting the institution.

Essien: Another service that the Anti-racism Team offers is that of caucusing. For me personally, I have felt that caucusing allows for a safe space for people of color and I would say for white people to express their challenges, their experiences with racism and how it impacts both groups. And we have just recently expanded caucusing to the entire campus. Particularly for people of color, identity issues are a major thing that we deal with.

Williams: Speaking on that, it’s important because we can get stuck on it. The white caucus is a safe space where we can talk and express our experiences and not be judged by colleagues of color.

Cothern: Because this was established as a majority white institution, one of the things that the A.R. team did was go through the archives and document cases of institutional racism, and we could see that it was happening, it was part of the culture, and we have to accept that to move beyond it.

Q: If a student feels discriminated against, should they come to the MED?

Hamlin: It’s not a center quite like that; we have members who aren’t employees. But as for a safe space, we work very well in dealing with those issues. One thing we aim for as we complete our diversity plan is that we need more things in place. We need an ethnic, sexual identity and harassment policy. We need some clarity on that.

Babic: The handbook does not specifically define harassment or have any policies for those issues. We’re also looking at how the current policies are not necessarily comprehensive.

Hamlin: Right now, we’ve got in-house trainers that are trained to be diversity trainers. With only two workshops, we can’t train enough people. Hopefully, we’ll be able to provide these services to the greater community.

Wilson: Yeah, to the readers, look out for more workshops in the year, and don’t be afraid to reach out to different members of the MED. We’re here for you.

Hamlin: And we’ve seen in recent workshops that we have many members who have a vested interest in Guilford’s success as an institution. You know – faculty, graduates, students. We could really see that, and it really ought to be celebrated.