Coming Together for Social Change

By: John Chacona, guest contributor

The protests and other events of the summer of 2020 have stirred an examination of social and racial justice issues among individuals and organizations of all kinds. Gannon University and the members of the Gannon community have fully engaged in this dialogue.

For the university, this is a call to renew the promise of its Mission, which ends with these words: “... we offer a comprehensive, values-centered learning experience that emphasizes faith, leadership, inclusiveness and social responsibility.”

Those are beautiful words, but they remain an abstraction until human action gives them meaning – the kind of action that the events of this tumultuous year have created with a heightened urgency.

At Gannon University, that urgency was strongly felt, even as the university was confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic. The response was swift and intentional, and it was taken up by all constituent groups within the Gannon community. While the results of their efforts will not be known immediately, the call to action has been answered.

Before students returned to campus, a Justice, Diversity and Inclusion Steering Committee of representatives from all colleges, divisions and campuses was chosen to create an institutional action plan to determine ways to involve all colleagues and students interested in supporting this work, and to coordinate ways to implement ideas for immediate action while formalizing the institutional plan.

That last point is crucial. “The work doesn’t want to live in this committee,” said Becky Perry, director of the Center for Social Concerns and the committee’s co-chair. “It will be a collaboration of many, and actions are already underway by various groups across the institution.”

Alumni groups as well as community partners in Erie and Ruskin will have a seat at the table, and students nominated by a newly created Student Advisory Committee will be represented.

Our whole community must come together to undertake this vital work, which is deeply rooted in our Mission.

Perry called the committee a necessary and overdue response, but she added, “The actions of the committee alone are not sufficient. Our whole community must come together to undertake this vital work, which is deeply rooted in our Mission. We recognize we are a predominantly white institution and we have a lot of work to do to ensure all of our students, especially those outside majority identities, are included so that they can see Gannon as a place they can call home.”

Today minority students make up 14% of Gannon’s enrollment, a proportion that has been increasing since 2013 when it was just 9%. Fifteen years ago, only 5% of Gannon students were from minority backgrounds.

Yet, history shows that like many urban Catholic institutions of higher learning, Gannon has a long history of welcoming minority students. Parris Baker ’92 Ph.D. has been a witness to much of it since arriving at Gannon College's campus in 1974 as a high school sophomore as part of the Upward Bound program.

“In the early ’70s, (campus life) was vibrant,” Baker said. “We were constantly being challenged to question our Afro-centrism as well as learning the Eurocentric material we needed to learn.” Baker remembers when more than 50 students of color would gather to watch the television news broadcasts and stay to discuss what they had just seen.

Through the leadership of figures such as Fred Thompson, Bonita Booker and others, black students found a welcoming home at a university that was, after all, created to provide opportunities for economically disadvantaged students.

It was not what I expected from a black student union. So last year, me and my president (Jade Hammerer), decided we’re going to be the change we want to see.

Beginning in the late 1960s, two factors led to a slow decline in the number of Black and other minority students attending Gannon. One was competition from institutions that were beginning to enroll minority students. The other was the draft that diverted male students from campus to service in the Vietnam War. By the time of Baker's arrival on campus, changes in enrollment patterns at colleges and universities nationwide were underway.

Recapturing the dynamism of those early years is an explicit goal for Gannon's Black Student Union.

The Black Student Union and Campus Ministry brought together members of the Gannon community for a Black Lives Matter prayer vigil in August.

Marian Collin Franco, the group’s vice president, said: “I joined BSU hoping that I could get a sense of community.”

A junior legal studies major, Collin Franco found her community but wanted more. “We didn’t put ourselves out there and did nothing for our Black community and Black students on campus,” she said. “It was not what I expected from a black student union. So last year, me and my president (Jade Hammerer), decided we’re going to be the change we want to see.”

“Marian came to me and said you know enough people on campus, and you are well rounded enough to make a change,” Hammerer said. “We made a plan and we were on it, but coronavirus set everything back. I personally feel that I haven’t done everything I wanted to do, but the coronavirus has made it hard.”

Still, a BSU prayer vigil in August on Friendship Green attracted a crowd the size and diversity of which surprised Collin Franco. “It was an amazing event,” she said. “I thought it would be Black people coming together to pray and be in unity, but it was so heartwarming to see faculty and administration and students of all colors come together, sit on the green and listen to what we had to say.”

Collin Franco and Hammerer bring unique personal qualifications to the struggle for equity that reflect the diversity that is within Gannon’s community of color.

As a native of the U.S. Virgin Islands, Collin Franco had never lived in a place where she was an ethnic minority. “At first, I was scared to interact with people, because even though I consider myself an outgoing person, Caribbeans are different from African-Americans,” she said. “Although we share the same complexion, how we think and act are very different. So, I had to figure out how to make friends, how do I not be weird, and be who I am.”

Hammerer attended a Jesuit high school, Cristo Rey, in Baltimore where almost the entire student body was of color. “Cristo Rey was way more active with social justice than Gannon is,” she said. “Almost every day, we’d do protests, prayer vigils, 10 minutes of silence. It wasn’t the same here.”

That might be about to change, just as the attitudes of students have evolved. “With recent events, students have been forced to deal with history in a different way,” Baker said. “This generation is saying we’re going to be who we’re going to be, and I hope Gannon University will become more comfortable with that.”

With recent events, students have been forced to deal with history in a different way...This generation is saying we’re going to be who we’re going to be, and I hope Gannon University will become more comfortable with that.

While looking forward, Baker also stresses the need to critically examine the past. In August he began the university’s Fall 2020 Speaker Series with a lecture titled “From 1619 Virginia to 16503 Erie: The Constitutional Path to Black Lives Matter,” a chronicle of how racism was embedded in the founding of the United States and how historical events have led to the current Black Lives Matter movement.

The series, titled Racial Justice: Be the Change, is presented by the College of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences and is one of the most visible ways the college is tackling the issue.

This summer, Lori Lindley, Ph.D., the college’s newly appointed dean, convened the CHESS Racial Justice task force, a collection of faculty who are committed to racial justice and to examining what the college is doing well and what can be done better.

“We have the broad goal of striving to be an anti-racist college and we’re looking at things like inclusive curriculum, how racial justice is integrated into the liberal core," Lindley said. "We’re looking at developing minors in diversity and justice studies, looking at student support and recruitment, faculty and staff recruitment, identifying professional development and community engagement opportunities."

Lindley is also co-chair of the University's steering committee, a role she sees as vital to build the university of the future, "where students from every background would feel that it is their place and where they can see faculty and staff that they can identify with and feel understood by. I want Gannon to be a place where faculty, staff and students are all committed to improving inclusiveness and valuing people from all backgrounds,” Lindley said.

“The environment of higher education and our world is changing and we have to live up to our mission, which is grounded in Catholic Social Teaching. Our steering committee encompasses Justice, Diversity and Inclusion broadly, and racial justice is central to that,” Lindley added.

This will be an undertaking as massive as it is necessary. But where to begin?

The answer, suggests the Very Rev. Michael Kesicki ’83, university chaplain and associate vice president of University Mission and Ministry, can be found in our hearts.

“Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, calls us to take on the mind and heart of the Good Samaritan in the parable of Jesus in Chapter 10 of St. Luke’s Gospel; to stop and pay attention to the person who is suffering and offer our friendship,” he said.

“This also means that we must first listen to the experience of others, to enter into meaningful relationship with them. The language of our university Mission must flow from the demand of the Gospel: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. According to the teaching of Jesus, it is not for us to ask who is my neighbor, but rather to become the neighbor to the other in need.”

According to the teaching of Jesus, it is not for us to ask who is my neighbor, but rather to become the neighbor to the other in need.

The parable of the Good Samaritan was at the heart of Pope Francis’ October 2020 encyclical, “Fratelli tutti,” where he called on us all to act decisively so that “we may prove capable of responding with a new vision of fraternity and social friendship that will not remain at the level of words.”

The rest is up to us.