YWCA ‘Walk to End Racism’ encourages education, dialogue

Dominic Chiappone asst. news editor

Young Women’s Christian Association Syracuse held its fifth annual “Walk to End Racism” on Wednesday afternoon as a call to action against systemic racism in the city and Onondaga County.

“We know that all this systematic racism was created by somebody else that doesn’t exist anymore, but we are here,” said Fanny Villarreal, the executive director of the YWCA chapter. “So we … are ready to work together to make sure changes are going to be done.”

The chapter organized the walk to give Syracuse community members an opportunity to collectively demonstrate local efforts to combat racism and injustice through conversation and action, Villarreal said.

YWCA organizers and participants walked over a mile from YWCA’s main office building on Douglas Street and finished at the Onondaga County Courthouse.

At the courthouse, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh and Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon declared April 26 “YWCA Stand Against Racism” day. The pair also announced the week of April 29 is “YWCA Stand Against Racism” week for both the city and county.

McMahon and Walsh both denounced institutional and structural racism, encouraging residents to work toward embracing diversity and eliminating racism through dialogue, reflection and action.

Precious Gerald, a board member of the local YWCA, said in her opening address that this year’s theme for the walk — “Until Justice Just Is” — was partly inspired by the death of Brexialee TorresOrtiz. The 11-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting on Jan. 16 outside Dr. King Elementary School in Syracuse.

Gerald said participants should educate themselves on how inequities in health education, nutrition and employment contribute to creating an environment of poverty, which in turn leads to increased violence.

Approximately 30% of all Syracuse residents live below the poverty line, according to July 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In March 2022, syracuse.com reported that Syracuse had the highest child poverty rate of any U.S. city with at least 100,000 people at over 48%.

Overall, Syracuse has the highest poverty rate for Hispanic people and the sixthhighest poverty rate for Black people in the to Royer, despite their having decades of experience in higher education marketing. Royer had none before coming to SU. nation, according to syracuse.com.

YWCA will also host its 25th annual “Day of Commitment” event Thursday morning, where members of different organizations including Jubilee Homes, Liberty Resources and Vera House will host diversity and inclusion workshops. Topics will include health equity, barriers to justice in the local community and trauma-informed care for Syracuse youth.

“We believe in the work that the YWCA is doing to stand against racism,” Gerald said. “It is part of our mission as an organization to help people in our communities live healthier and more secure lives. We are committed to making upstate New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.” dcchiapp@syr.edu

@DominicChiappo2

One note in the 2021 internal “Directors and Above” report also said that those who Royer favors have better access to leadership and are promoted faster. Terwilliger, who participated in the review, wrote in a message to The D.O. that the report’s notes were a “generally agreed upon” consensus with those participating.

On Feb. 17, The D.O. wrote a series of questions to SU as well as to Royer individually. Royer never directly responded. The university initially responded to the six questions with a single sentence.

“The University carefully reviewed these allegations and, following the review, determined them to be without merit,” a university spokesperson said.

Upon receiving the questions a second time, the university wrote in another email that “change can be hard” within organizations.

“Dara Royer was hired more than five years ago to bring needed transformational change and a new strategic vision to the University’s marketing efforts, and she has accomplished those goals,” a university spokesperson wrote.

Lisa Thompson previously worked as the liaison between SU Central Marketing and the division of Advancement and External Affairs, which has the express goal of creating relationships with alumni and donors. In September 2021, Royer asked Thompson to “rip the band-aid off” between Central Marketing and AEA, according to a memo Thompson addressed to SU’s Board of Trustees and “Syracuse University Leadership.”

Ripping the band-aid off, to Royer, meant dropping marketing support to AEA unless Royer and her team directed the strategies. Thompson wrote in the memo that she felt compelled to listen — she had an understanding that from Royer’s perspective, it was her job to carry out a directive without question.

After she protested some of Royer’s directives, Thompson wrote that Royer met with her and proposed without any clear definition that Thompson “transition.” Thompson said she was asked to resign after the meeting and then was let go when she refused to do so.

“If you conduct your due diligence,” Thompson wrote to SU leadership, “you may find that … Dara Royer is not the leader she portrays herself as.” Thompson said she never received a response from SU.

One former senior staffer within marketing, who asked not to be named, said they were continually admonished for offering observations

“I concluded that my role was to support Dara’s vision and to never question her direction,” they wrote in a letter to colleagues after they left the university, “even when that direction was internally contradictory, vague, conflicting over time or ill-advised given the potential reaction of university constituents.”

The same former staffer wrote in the letter that they had, on “hundreds” of occasions, seen Royer speak “vitriolically, unfairly and sometimes untruthfully about peers and colleagues.”

“She has unprofessionally referred to her direct peers as ‘stupid,’ ‘unable to manage,’, ‘unreasonable and wrong’, ‘a mess’ and completely not strategic,’” they wrote.

In one example, the former senior staffer said they observed Royer impose “unreasonable” expectations on an employee placed on medical leave. They said Royer repeatedly bullied and targeted the employee throughout the employee’s tenure at SU, calling them “unreliable, incompetent and overly dramatic.”

Also in their final message to colleagues, they said the AEA team was one of Royer’s most frequent targets.

The university defined “psychological safety”as a person’s feeling that they can speak up without punishment or embarrassment within the 15-page report. One person included in the report said they didn’t feel psychological safety in the department under Royer. Those in the “Directors and Above” meetings noted at the time that it “doesn’t always feel safe to disagree.”

In the report’s conclusions, which listed what the group wanted to discuss further, participants noted that men get many more positive comments than women in the office, making women feel “less than.”

One person remarked that “male and female representation isn’t equally distributed across leadership within creative teams.” Monica Rexach Ortiz, a former member of SU marketing’s creative team, said she saw the imbalance while working for the university.

“There were women doing the same job who were not being recognized, and it was really frustrating to observe,” Rexach said. “It just didn’t feel great for women in the office. And it’s weird because Dara is a woman and you would expect that to help, but I think that that workplace has a long way to go.”

Soon after Royer joined the university, SU reorganized what was then the marketing and communications division. On June 12, 2018, Royer and SU leadership brought the entirety of the department into a single room in the Schine Student Center. Behind the employees was a stack of white envelopes, each with an employee’s name on it and a meeting assignment.

For some, the assignment meant their jobs were eliminated. SU gave those employees a courtesy interview for an open position, for which they had three days to prepare. Many ended up leaving the university or retiring early.

At the time of the meeting, Royer was the university’s chief communications officer. In an audio recording of the meeting, she told the group she knew the timeline was fast.

“We recognize that this creates a lot of anxiety,” Royer said. “And we want to help people know and have clarity on what this means for them personally and professionally.”

The D.O. reported in 2018 that SU eliminated the jobs of nearly 30 people during the reorganization. At the end of the rehiring process, 13 no longer worked for the marketing and communications division. More recent documentation shows that six people who went through the process had worked for the university for at least 30 years.

The reorganization prompted SU professors Tula Goenka and Coran Klaver to start a petition to express concern over the restructuring process.

“This may be the most expedient way of changing job titles and job descriptions,” Goenka told The D.O. in 2018. “But the toll it takes on people’s lives and the anxiety people had for that one week is just not acceptable.

Rexach called the whole process “a shock.”

“It was a feeling of disbelief and you’re trying not to freak out, but you’re freaking out,” she said.

While many employees were disappointed with their experience at SU, some did speak positively of Royer and the marketing division as a whole.

SU brought in Alex DeRosa, the executive director of multimedia, in April 2019, a year after the reorganization. In his time at the university, he said he’s grown as a leader and that his current role is more fulfilling than others he had before coming to SU.

“Marketing was kind of formed quickly and I think as you grow into these roles and you bring new people in I think the culture is always evolving and switching,” DeRosa said. “We’ve come a long way in that and I personally feel like I work with some great people.”

Another employee also spoke positively of SU marketing and of Royer. Robin Wade, a member of SU’s University Leadership Team as well as the university’s executive director of digital marketing, said it’s one of the greatest organizations she’s ever worked in.

“I’m so proud to be an employee here,” Wade said. “We’re educating the future of our world … it’s something that just feels like an honor.”

Some comments in the internal review also rationalized some of Royer’s actions, citing pressures above her.

“This University is behind in modern marketing,” one review participant wrote. “Dara (Royer) was tasked with squeezing 10 years’ worth of marketing growth into 3 years and it’s taxing everyone to death. It’s suffocating.”

When discussing the department’s creative review process, one person attending the meetings noted that even considering some people’s criticisms, Royer is in a tough spot.

“Dara (Royer) tries her best to stay positive and constructive,” they said. “No matter what form a creative review takes, we all have to have thick skins.”

Royer has also participated in women’s empowerment events on campus, including moderating a conversation with Provost Gretchen Ritter in February 2022 for the university’s Women in Leadership initiative. Royer herself is also on the steering committee of SU’s WiL initiative.

Still, multiple employees, including Rexach and Thompson, said the division’s toxic environment has led people to leave SU marketing “in droves.” Rexach and Terwilliger both said they left the university voluntarily. SU did not directly answer questions from The D.O. regarding the department’s turnover.

For those who stayed during the turnover, it meant a constant responsibility to train new hires.

“If you constantly have to train people, it really puts more on your plate to do as somebody who has been there for a while and as somebody who knows what they’re doing,” Rexach said. “You’re the person that is turned to to help people who are new with their job.”

The employee who left in winter 2021 also said that while training was constant, so were interviews. The “revolving door” of employees completely disrupted the division’s ability to work, the former employee said.

Terwilliger said in a message to The D.O. that her thoughts on her time at SU have not changed since she sent her June email to Royer and SU HR. She said the university never responded to the email as of April 18.

“SU marketing is the Dara Royer Show — it’s all about your ideas, what you like, what you want, what you approve,” Terwilliger wrote to Royer. “After being there for a few months, all of your benevolent words start to ring false.” kschouin@syr.edu

@Kyle_Chouinard