Looking back on recent campus events

Considering the recent developments that have been taking place on our campus, frustration in large portions of the student body has been mounting.

Now more than ever, we are compelled to look back at what our university claims to strive for and the results that currently present themselves. The results of this analysis are not encouraging. In fact, they are troubling.

When you look at the statistics that are provided by UTK in their Diversity and Inclusion page for VolVision 2020, you can’t help but feel that progress towards increasing the diversity of the UTK student body has been glacial. In just under a decade, enrollment points for women and under-represented minorities have increased less than 5 percentage points. Retention statistics have been even less encouraging.

But beyond pure numbers, we are still running into a persistent problem: some do not seem to value that more than just numbers will have to change for UT to become a more diverse place. It also must become a place that is more welcoming of diverse people and not just a place with more minority students.

A major part of this is confronting the prejudicial and racist behavior and beliefs that perpetually harm our campus community. In the past 6 months, Neo-Nazis have defaced The Rock with racist graffiti, a UT student and Alpha Chi Omega sorority member was caught on tape saying the n-word. Most recently, the Volunteer community was hit by yet another act of hatred when a racist photo posted on Snapchat depicted three UT students wearing blackface, captioned with a joke about affirmative action.

And these are just the incidents that have made headlines. Every day on UT’s campus is a struggle for many Volunteer students belonging to minorities. In my nearly three years at this university, I have been shocked and outraged at the number of students here who have repeatedly endured insults, slights and dehumanizing experiences for no reason other than the color of their skin, their sexual orientation or their gender. Not only is this a regular occurrence at UT, but it is very detrimental and potentially a deadly trend.

Societal norms influence behaviors, and the more normalized hate speech becomes on our campus, the more likely it becomes that it will preface violence and discrimination against students from under-represented minorities.

What angers me the most is how normal this has begun to seem.

The UT administration has responded the same way almost every time to these incidents. It has come forth and broadly (and sometimes reluctantly) denounced them, it has admitted that shortcomings in diversity and inclusion efforts at UTK exist and need to be addressed, and then, has done little or nothing to address them.

It is truly incomprehensible to me that the UT administration could so readily condemn something as harmless and as beneficial as sexual education for UT students but could not condemn the violence of Nazis. It is deeply troubling that our university at present seems more concerned with the confidentiality of racists (who posted their racism on social media), than holding them accountable for their hateful and hurtful actions.

This is really where the university seems to consistently fall short with regards to issues with diversity and inclusion: accountability.

The truth is that racists and white supremacists continue spreading their hatred at our school because they know that they can basically get away with it. There exists virtually no mechanism currently to penalize this kind of dangerous behavior at UT.

As I write this, the university has recently sent out an email in which it pledges to take concrete steps to respond to the racism and discrimination which plagues this campus. Only time will tell if these pledges amount to anything. But in the eyes of many, including myself, nothing short of a complete overhaul of how the university deals with diversity and inclusion issues is required.

As a campus, we need to forge a campus climate that is more proactive than reactive. In this way, we can begin to hack away at the root of these systemic problems.

Condemnation is necessary, expected and an important part of recognizing that a problem does indeed exist with our campus climate.

But reaction cannot be the only action we take.

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