GUASFCU intern highlights Blackness, calls for change

in his letter that during the 2021-22 board term, he was the only Black executive out of 26 available positions: nine C-suite members of the board of directors and 17 auxiliary executives who report to them. Bossous described that since joining the credit union in 2019, he has counted only five Black interns, including himself, who have held leadership roles, none of which were C-suite positions (the letter was sent before 2023-24 Board elections and does not reflect those officers).

In response to his letter, the 2022-23 board of directors met with Bossous on Jan. 4 over Zoom, but he is not confident that they will take the steps toward inclusion that he has suggested. Only six of the nine members of the board were present, which signaled to him that they did not take his concerns seriously.

“While grateful to them for taking the time, I went into the meeting with little to no expectations,” Bossous said in an interview with the Voice. “As much as I was waiting for them to impress me with a meaningful response, I was not holding out hope for very long.”

In Bossous’ view, the board repeated a familiar strategy: issuing commitments to diversity and inclusion, yet neglecting actionable follow-through. Bossous advocated in his letter for meaningful actions that demonstrated the credit union was capable of more than paying lip service to values of diversity and inclusion, as it has done in the past.

Many of the letter’s concerns reflect the long-standing cultural issues that have affected GUASFCU since before many of its current interns joined. The credit union is no stranger to allegations of toxic behavior within the workplace. In 2017, a GUASFCU intern took issue with the persistent whiteness of the new class of tellers and the “beauty contest” recruitment process. Senior Hoyas might recall the misconduct scandal involving 2019-20 CEO Kuran Malhotra (MSB ’20), whose ascension to C-suite was enabled by old board members who knew about yet chose to overlook his misconduct allegations. In January 2022, an intern in the class of 2022 wrote a letter to the freshly elected 2022-23 board of directors, urging them to do greater outreach toward students of color.

Bossous, who was consulted by that intern a year ago, drew on those recommendations in his own advocacy.

Bossous’ letter advocates for organizational transparency with its past scandals to bridge the institutional memory gap. “GUASFCU shoulders the burden and responsibility of keeping its interns fully informed, even if that involves less palatable issues and uncomfortable conversations about workplace misconduct, a history of nepotism in recruitment, or, as much as we claim to value the opposite, a culture of exclusivity,” he wrote.

GUASFCU’s hiring practices have historically enabled subjectivity and favoritism in determining who is accepted into the club, according to Boussous. The letter criticized the timeline of GUASFCU’s application cycle in fall of 2022, arguing that its decision to hold first-round interviews during CAB fair instead of tabling privileged first year applicants who already knew about the organization before matriculating.

“When we make a hiring decision, it is a unanimous decision between all nine members of the board of directors, plus the executives from Human Resources and Community Engagement,” a representative from the 2022-23 GUASFCU Board explained in an interview with the Voice Bossous and an intern who spoke with the Voice under the condition of anonymity thus see the lack of diversity in GUASFCU leadership as contributing to a cyclical lack of diversity in teller classes.

Jordan, who previously served as a GUASFCU executive and commented on the condition of anonymity, highlighted several flaws with the hiring process in their support for Bossous and his letter. “I agree that the hiring practices lack standardization and at times sensitive consideration,” Jordan wrote, reflecting on their time conducting recruitment interviews during the 2021-22 cycle. “And when the deliberation room lacks diversity, pulling more in can be an uphill battle.”

This year, the credit union started to phase in some of those hiring reforms. In the fall 2022 recruitment cycle, GUASFCU introduced a rubric to standardize its interview process and held a bias sensitivity training ahead of interviews. “We believe that having some sort of numerical tie to our interviews helps make sure that we can limit bias as much as possible,” a representative from the executive board explained.

Bossous, however, was not particularly impressed by the results of this step, especially given the length of time it took the board to implement rubric-based hiring. Bossous mentioned that standardizing interviews was proposed as early as 2020 but was not realized until last fall. “The credit union has made these changes with negligible results,” he said. “There is not a big difference in the demographics of the new [fall 2022] intern class, so the question that should arise is: What should we do better?”

During fall recruitment, GUASFCU also introduced a networking event for students of color. “We have started a tea time program during recruitment for interns of color, allowing them to ask other interns of color about their experiences as an open and honest