Efforts at BCC to combat bias are criticized

A year after a racially insensitive math question rocked Bellevue Community College, racial tensions are flaring up again on campus.

Some students and faculty say the school suffers from institutional racism and lags behind in everything from fielding complaints to retention of minority students and teachers. Tensions were pushed to the forefront in March, after a Somali student found racist messages on his car and another student asked how to sign a racial slur in a sign-language class.

The administration says it remains committed to campus diversity and is investigating both cases, but critics say school officials aren't working fast enough.

The latest incidents are a fresh wound for a school that has won several national awards for its diversity efforts and is still recovering from the math-question controversy last year. In that incident, an instructor wrote an exam question that school officials said demeaned U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and employed a racist stereotype of blacks and watermelons.

The school is "getting awards, but for what?" said Jonathan Woldaub, a third-year student from Renton. "If these are awards for diversity, we've got a long ways to go."

Last month, Student Actions For Equality (S.A.F.E.) was formed to push the administration to better protect students from discrimination and biased behavior.

What's been done


After a racially insensitive math-exam question caused a public outcry in April 2006, Bellevue Community College said it would take the following steps to increase racial and cultural sensitivity. Here's how the school has done so far:

Create a vice president of equity and pluralism. James Bennett, the dean of instruction, was hired for the position in August. His job is to reach out to the campus community and develop programs to promote racial and cultural diversity.

Create an ombudsman position. Miranda Kato, a business instructor, was hired this week. On a part-time basis, she will field confidential complaints about bias and intolerance. Some students were unhappy that the job was filled several months behind schedule and was open to only current BCC faculty. Administrators said they limited the job to current faculty because it was quicker. Hiring was delayed because no one applied for the job when it was first advertised last winter.

Increase funding for pluralism training and development. The school is paying for an instructor to take leave from teaching to work on pluralism activities, and has held "Beyond Diversity" and "Courageous Conversations" workshops and discussions.

Track data showing where the college fails to provide excellence to all students. The school wants to update its computer system to better track student retention and degree completion by race, program and other criteria. Administrators say they hope to have the system in place this fall.

Add a pluralism component in program reviews and employee evaluations. Last year the school added pluralism to the evaluations of administrators and nonunion employees. The school wants to add pluralism to evaluations as part of its union contracts with faculty and classified staff when those contracts expire this year and 2009, respectively.

Have professional development days for faculty and staff to focus on pluralism, especially in the upcoming year. The school added a Pluralism Day to its opening week last fall, which included faculty workshops on diversity, and instructors have started their own workshops. Critics point out that none of the sessions are mandatory.

Kyla Harvey, a first-year student from Bellevue who helped form the group, says its first task is to get the school to come up with clear definitions of what constitutes racial discrimination and hate crimes.

The administrators "give an aura of complacency that this isn't really their issue," she said. "I have very little faith in the administration as far as what they've done."

Changes made

After the controversy last year, the school instituted several changes designed to increase racial sensitivity, including the creation of a vice president for equity and pluralism. James Bennett, on the job for nine months, says the school is bound to go through "discomfort" while it tries to improve equity on campus.

The math-question controversy and the incidents this spring are setbacks, Bennett said, but "I've experienced nothing that says we've backed away from our commitment."

He said campus police moved the Somali student to a safer parking lot after the messages were found on his car. The school is taking action this month in response to the sign-language incident but can't provide details because of student-privacy laws and the contract with the faculty union, he said.

The school plans to create definitions for hate crimes and bias incidents and an "incident response team," made up of administrators, to better address student complaints, he added.

We need to "clarify and make this great morass of rules and regulations more transparent," Bennett said.

In a campuswide e-mail this week, BCC President Jean Floten said "we must continue to engage in conversations on race, including concepts of white privilege and systemic racism, if we are ever to get beyond simple palliatives about racial matters."

Everyone on campus has a common goal of ensuring the school is a welcoming place, but they're split on how to get it done, said Rosemary Richardson, a 36-year biology instructor and president of the faculty union. Some people say change is happening too fast; others say it's too slow, she said.

Some black students, in public and private meetings with administrators, have said they don't feel safe on campus after the two incidents this spring. Other students say they're sharing too much of the burden to improve things on campus.

School commitment

Mike Akrish, a third-year student from Bellevue, points to the school's Affirmation of Inclusion, a two-sentence document posted in every classroom. It says the school is committed to a campus environment where everyone "feels welcome to participate in the life of the college, free from harassment and discrimination."

"Proactively, [the administrators] don't do as much as they claim," Akrish said. "... Especially when you walk into every room and see that this should be something you're working for."

Bennett said it's up to him to reach out to students so they feel safe, but widespread change won't happen overnight. "We're still taking baby steps in some ways."

He agrees the school can improve its retention of minority students, a problem shared by many other colleges, as well as hiring and retention of minority faculty.

About 17 percent of full-time faculty are minorities, compared with 30 percent of the students, a discrepancy that is far too large, Bennett said. The school created a committee last fall to recruit more minority instructors, and some will likely be hired this year, he said.

According to numbers compiled last year, Asian and multiracial students are staying at BCC longer than white students, but black students trail all three groups. Just 44 percent of the black students who enrolled in fall 2005 planning to get a degree were at BCC a year later, compared to 63 percent of both Asian and multiracial students and 56 percent of white students.

The silver lining to the math-question controversy, according to students, instructors and administrators, is that people began talking about race more than ever before. But that goes only so far, they say.

"This last year has been challenging for all of us," Richardson said. "I think if we were able to sit down and listen more, we have the same goals in mind. It's hard to listen when there's so much pain."

Ashley Bach: 206-464-2567 or abach@seattletimes.com