Kanye West once said, “She never messed with entertainers ’cause they always leave,” in reference to how the city of Chicago’s entertainers are always leaving for a life of fame.
David Butts’ sudden departure from the College makes me think of that line. I know he isn’t anything close to Kanye and The College of Wooster isn’t Chicago, but Kanye had a point.
The rate at which staff enter Wooster’s campus and then leave after a short period of time is incredibly high. These staff are typically in extremely impactful positions such as David’s former title of director of multicultural student affairs. They’ll come to the College for about a year or so, get involved in the campus life, and then make a sudden departure, leaving projects unresolved. This leads to confusion and mistrust for students and makes it extremely difficult for student leadership to make any progress.
Butts took on roles that needed to be filled by someone who had intentions of staying at Wooster for a longer period of time. He became the advisor for Men of Harambe, assisted with the development of Minorities in S.T.E.M., began developing the Multicultural Coalition and probably worked on other projects of which I am unaware.
His departure left the multicultural community up in the air. I was personally involved in the Multicultural Coalition, which he was attempting to develop, where he wanted to bring the multicultural organizations together in order to create a group calendar and facilitate relationships between different groups. While this was an amazing idea and one that the campus needs, its future has become stagnant with his departure.
As a student leader, I am expected to take on the responsibility of successfully representing and operating a student organization along with my other duties as a student at Wooster. In short, student leaders don’t have time to attempt to fill the gap that was once David’s position, and neither do his former co-workers. When a staff member leaves, all of their tasks are divided up and given to other staff.
This tactic of temporarily resolving the issue looks good on paper, but it honestly just makes matters worse because now the staff is overworked. With staff being overworked, the new tasks that they are given often get neglected, leading to a domino effect of failure.
It seems that when Wooster hires a new staff member, particularly one that works with student organizations in some way, they attempt to create change but then they leave before the change occurs. The departure of David is disappointing because there was no communication to the students as to what would happen now that he is gone.
In a time where students are discovering their true passions, I think it would be nice if we felt that those passions would be supported by the same person as time progressed. Wooster fails to grow because it never allows its new roots to get comfortable in the soil.
Moving forward, the administration needs to be more transparent about staff departing from the College. I also think that during the hiring process, a factor in employment should be how long a prospective employee plans on staying at Wooster. In relation to student leadership, organizations should attempt to pick up the pieces David left behind, like the Multicultural Coalition, and use his ideas to create a better collaborative environment at Wooster.
Korri Palmer, a Contributing Writer for the Voice, can be reached for comment at KPalmer20@wooster.edu.