Over the past summer, the Black Laurentian Initiative (BLI) has been working on a course development project, where every department at St. Lawrence University will have to implement a course based on diversity, equity, equality and anti-racism. This semester, the BLI is moving forward with the project, having conversations with faculty and staff to enlist their support of the project.
The BLI is an organization founded by a group of BIPOC students after the murders of several African Americans during the summer of 2020. One of the reasons why BLI is working on the course development project is to help educate the student body within the St. Lawrence University education system. “The purpose of the St. Lawrence education is to produce productive citizens and leaders, and that is impossible without educating students about race and equity dynamics, which exist in every area of society,” said Diamond McAllister ‘22, President of the BLI. BLI has also reached out to several faculty and staff members, including Vice President of Academic Affairs Karl Schonberg, who is “on board with the idea and supportive.”
Furthermore, the BLI course development project is a long process and can’t be implemented during the upcoming spring registration. “I see this taking about three to five years honestly; because it takes so much to create courses and then push for these courses to become mandatory,” said McAllister. St. Lawrence University has been stagnant when it comes to implementing diversity courses within St. Lawrence University. “We’re trying to break a system,” said Vice President of the BLI Penda Sarr.
Moreover, when it comes to implementing these changes within St. Lawrence’s education system, Sarr said “There’s just been a way of doing things for a really long time and everyone around has just viewed it as acceptable. Then we are coming in and kind of being, you know, like calling out everything that’s going on and it’s really challenging because not a lot of people are really willing to change their mindset or be open to it until they have to. People feel like their beliefs are being attacked and that things like this go against what they’ve always done.” Many professors are willing to adjust to current times and change their curriculum to include diversity, equity, equality and inclusion, while other professors don’t want to because they have academic freedom.
“It doesn’t come as a surprise though, that we don’t have a course available for students to take that would educate them about internalized racism and white supremacy.” Said Iman Maani ‘22, a member of The Black Laurentian Initiative. Many people, like Maani, are supportive of the BLI course development project, and believe that having it implanted within St. Lawrence is “one step further towards racial equity,” said Maani.
“One of the consequences of avoiding deep conversations about race and racism is that we end up graduating as accidental racists,” said Associate Dean of Diversity and Inclusion Kimberly Flint–Hamilton. Karl Schonberg, Vice President and Dean of Academic Affairs, has been very supportive of BLI’s work on the course development project. “Every faculty member in every department should be thinking diversity, equity and inclusion in their classes,” he said. In the end result of the BLI course development project Karl Schonberg said we should “have a stronger sense of the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism.”