Last Thursday, the Multicultural Center Steering Committee held a series of focus groups that were designed to discuss a new center that would provide support, resources and the opportunity for personal development for diverse students at Michigan Tech. Students were informed of the different focus groups and the meeting locations through an e-mail sent out to all Michigan Tech students along with table-tents put out at dining locations throughout the campus. Focus groups were scheduled for seven minority groups (such as African Americans, Native Americans, Women Undergraduates and GLBT students) and two sessions were held for Undergraduate and Graduate students.
After sending the e-mail out to the Michigan Tech student body, one student replied. Dr. Christa Walck, facilitator of the Multicultural Center task force said, “we received an e-mail response to our mass mailing… which was negative about including GLBT students.” This single e-mail stated that its sender would not attend any of the focus groups because GLBT students were being included in the meetings. The task force, concerned about the potential for students to protest at the scheduled meeting, decided to reevaluate the location of the focus group.
According to Walck, disclosing the location of the GLBT focus group was an inadvertent mistake. After realizing that the location of the meeting had been made public, she consulted both the person who would be facilitating the focus group and a faculty advisor for Keweenaw Pride. The decision was then made to move the location of the meeting to a secret location. Walck said that the change was made “to make it safe for students to participate.”
The decision to move the location of the GLBT focus group was the exact opposite reaction the University should have taken. By hiding the focus group, any potential protestor was stripped of their ability to participate in the dialogue. There would be no harm in a protestor choosing to attend any of the focus group meetings. As long as the protestor agrees to abide by the same rules as the other attendees, they should be given the same opportunity to voice their opinion. However, the purpose of the meeting was to gather input from minority students about how to build a center to cultivate diversity at Michigan Tech. The voice of the protestor, though not unwelcome, was not the voice the committee wanted to hear and was consequently avoided under the façade of the safety.
Had the committee caught wind of protestors planning to attend the focus group for African American students, they most likely wouldn’t have moved their meeting to the basement of a building on the far end of campus. Public Safety would have been alerted and if any disrespectful protestors had actually shown up, they would have been asked to leave.
Students who actually managed to find the secret meeting location were not greeted by welcoming surroundings but rather by a locked door. One student who planned to attend the meeting was locked out of the building because as soon as the meeting started, the building’s doors were locked. This student unwillingly missed over half of the meeting because they couldn’t even enter the building.
The Michigan Tech student body was not informed of the change in location. If there had been any students who planned to attend the meeting but were not in the loop, they would not have known where to go. The committee failed to even have a staff member present at the scheduled location to inform those who planned to go to the original location of the new location.
Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this decision is the message it sends. Any protestors who showed up at the advertised location saw an empty room. They won. Regardless of whether the meeting had been moved to a secret location or been cancelled altogether, the voices of those they oppose were silenced. GLBT students and allies were swept under the rug. Although the focus group still functioned under the rug, the fact that any minority group on campus has to hide because of a small group of potential protestors is a sad sign of the times. To me, the response of the University to the potential threat of protest was a way of not confronting homophobia. It was the easy way out. The committee should have ensured safety and comfort for the participants of all focus groups and the potential productivity of the meetings by not changing their location. If the safety of minority students was truly the sole reason for concern, perhaps Public Safety should have been present at the meetings to help all minority students feel safe. Or, perhaps, the committee should have seized this opportunity to get two distinctly different viewpoints by holding two meetings – one of which was kept secret to protect “closeted” GLBT students.
This experience suggests the need for some sort of training that would educate faculty members about how to deal with these types of situations. When given an opportunity to comment on the content of the e-mail that prompted the change in location (I was not asking her to reveal the identity of the sender), Walck chose not to comment and instead simply stated, “feel free to criticize [my decision].” She then sent an e-mail to every member of the committee, including some of the highest-ranked officials at Michigan Tech, warning them that “you might be contacted by Danny Messinger today about the decision… If you are contacted by him, my preference is that you simply refer him to me since it was my decision. I have already answered his questions as fully as I intend to.” The unwillingness of University faculty to discuss the situation or to even share details of this decision demonstrates a lack of experience and perhaps a low comfort level with addressing homophobic issues.
The proposed center that would provide services for minorities on campus is certainly a step in the right direction. In fact, most other major universities in the state already have these types of resources available for minorities on their respective campuses. Despite the change in location, the GLBT focus group still provided a lot of useful information and ideas to the steering committee.
The committee had good intentions when scheduling their meetings and even when they moved the location of the GLBT focus group. The safety of GLBT students attending the meetings surely should be considered when planning these meetings, but the message sent by the change in location was the wrong one.
In the interest of promoting diversity and open-mindedness at Michigan Tech, this decision was a step backwards.