While the multicultural community was given an opportunity to meet newly appointed African-American Student Affairs Director Shadra Smith on Wednesday, students were organizing to call for the removal of the woman who helped select her.
On Monday, a group of campus multicultural group members delivered a packet to five Northwestern administrators and four professors that discussed their "lack of confidence" in Multicultural Student Affairs Executive Director Carretta Cooke.
Both Cooke and Smith, who visited campus Wednesday for a meet-and-greet reception at African-American Student Affairs, declined to comment for this article.
According to the students' allegations in the letter, Cooke lacks visibility within the multicultural community, has failed to organize interaction between cultural communities and is unresponsive to many student requests and initiatives. The letter was signed by 13 presidents and co-presidents of cultural student organizations, as well as 10 former presidents of the same organizations.
In addition to the letter, the students included a petition signed by 150 NU students in support of their statement of no confidence; copies of the resignation letter of Kristen Reid, former graduate assistant for MSA; and a compilation of information about past student frustrations with MSA and Cooke.
Reid's letter, dated March 12, 2007, accused Cooke of having a "negative attitude towards the field of student affairs," "unprofessional habits, views and ideas" and "biased and unethical behavior."
In response to the accusations in the packet, Vice President for Student Affairs William Banis said he and Provost Daniel Linzer plan to meet with the Coalition of Colors next week. The Coalition of Colors is an alliance of minority student groups that meets periodically during the year.
However, Banis said he has "concerns about the veracity of some of the information," which he called "incomplete and misleading."
Banis said he is anxious to meet with the students and hear their concerns, but wants to achieve a clear understanding of which statements are facts and which are only impressions and opinions.
"We first have to engage in a dialogue," he said. "We're trying to really understand the facts. Some of this is very emotional, and we understand that."
The university will be taking the students' concerns seriously and looking into the issue, Linzer wrote in an e-mail.
"Concerns raised about individuals are of course handled confidentially and as objectively as possible," he wrote. "A challenge … is that issues of multiculturalism are often complex and emotional."
Late Tuesday night, 10 members of multicultural student group executive boards who had signed either the statement or petition met to discuss their frustrations and plan their next steps to encourage change within MSA. Former For Members Only Coordinator Zachary Parker led the discussion, which included members of FMO, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, the South Asian Students Alliance and Alianza.
According to Parker, the idea for students to collaborate and send the information came from past years of student frustrations and suggestions from the Coalition of Colors.
Part of their goal is to let administrators know their criticisms of Cooke are not coming from only a few students or just the black community, Parker said.
"The administration was able to isolate (leaders' complaints in the past) because it appeared as though it was an issue that was only pertinent to a few black leaders," Parker said.
Students discussed the ambiguity of MSA's mission statement, and said Cooke denied their requests to see her official job description.
According to Cooke's curriculum vitae on the School of Education and Social Policy Web site, Cooke's job as MSA executive director includes supervising "the Directors of Hispanic/Latino Student Affairs, African-American Student Affairs, and Asian/Asian American Student Affairs" and "providing and supporting activities and initiatives that address the social, cultural and educational needs of multicultural students." The MSA executive director also manages department budgets and assists with the retention of multicultural students.
During the meeting, several executive board members under Hispanic/Latino Student Affairs and Asian/Asian American Student Affairs mentioned that they had never met Cooke and were unaware of her role. After finding a picture of Cooke on NU's Web site, several students said they had never seen her and didn't know what she looks like.
"How can you represent constituents that you don't even know?" Parker said.
APAC President Amy Zhu said she became aware of student grievances with Cooke as APAC's programming chairwoman last year. She said although she was on the executive board last year and this year, she had "zero interaction" with Cooke.
"As a student leader, we should have access to the director of MSA," Zhu said. "This should be a person who we know very well."
An effective director could offer insight into group interactions with administrators and other student groups, Zhu said.
"A change obviously needs to be made to address the lack of communication and her invisibility as a director," she said.
Alianza President Arianna Hermosillo said conversations about Cooke and MSA problems in general have taken place during her entire student career. Students last year created a petition to form an MSA task force to address their concerns, the Medill junior said.
Many Alianza members are not even aware that MSA has an executive director, and if they are, they may not know how to use the director as a resource, Hermosillo said.
"I understand it's not humanly possible to attend every single student event, but I think it's possible to present yourself in a way that you're approachable and say, 'I'm here if you need me,'" Hermosillo said. "And I don't know if I've ever seen that."
A longstanding complaint in the cultural community, the lack of a director for African-American Student Affairs, was resolved on April 30 when Smith's appointment was announced. The position had been vacant since last September, when former director Shawna Cooper-Gibson left to become the assistant dean of the School of Communication at Loyola University in Chicago.
About 30 students and NU community members attended Smith's welcome reception Wednesday. Both Cooke and Smith declined to speak to The Daily at the reception. Cooke previously said Smith will not speak to The Daily until she starts her position on June 8.
Lillianna Franco, an intern at Hispanic/Latino Student Affairs, said she attended the reception because she hopes for more collaboration between African-American Student Affairs and Hispanic/Latino Student Affairs under Smith's future leadership.
"She sounds very prepared and ready to take on the job," the Communication sophomore said. "You have to form these ties and get used to everyone."
Sociology and African-American studies Prof. Mary Pattillo said Smith's biggest challenges will be re-energizing programming, continuing black enrollment efforts and coming up with innovative ways to strengthen the black community.
"She will have to double her energy to put life back in a department that hasn't had leadership at that level for a year," Pattillo said.
But for many student cultural group leaders, the solution to improving African-American Student Affairs, and MSA overall, must involve finding new leadership.
Hermosillo said students are asking for Cooke's removal because, based on the history of past student grievances, it doesn't seem possible to work with her to solve their problems.
The next step student leaders plan to take is reaching out to all the members of their cultural communities, she said.
"These are students that deserve to have a director of MSA that's visible and available," she said. "They deserve support."
c-salter@northwestern.edu
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