Waverly Hart
Managing Editor
Almost a year and three months after the Galpin Call-in, many of the student leaders’ original demands have been achieved or are in the process of being realized.
The Call-in, which occurred on the morning of Jan. 24, 2018, resulted in administration agreeing to 17 out of 21 of students’ demands, including funding for student groups, providing houses to multicultural student organizations and clarity and accessibility of campus resources. According to Robert Dinkins, Jr. ’19, one of the spearheads of the demonstration, most of these demands have been honored and achieved.
“Looking back on the demands that were agreed upon, I can say that there is progress that has been made,” Dinkins said.
“The biggest single change is hiring Dr. García in a Cabinet-level position,” Dean of Students Scott Brown said of the outcome of the Galpin Call-in. “It is a very significant statement to ensure the structural, long-range, cross-divisional work needed to enhance our community and move forward. We have all been working to create a more inclusive and equitable community in earnest for some time, and she will help us all amplify, create and integrate the efforts.”
Following the Call-in, Dinkins and Annabelle Hopkins ’19 decided to create the Galpin Call-in Committee, an ad-hoc committee given the task of overseeing the policy aspects of the different agreed-upon demands.
In an interview with the Voice, Dinkins went through each demand and detailed the College’s progress with achieving it.
The first demand asked for funding for the Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI). This was achieved when the CDI received $20,000 out of the presidential budget.
The next demand addressed discrepancy between student group funds. According to Dinkins, Campus Council made an official change to the allocations process for how groups are given money. A representative for Campus Council was contacted for comment, but did not respond by press time.
The next demands are two that have not been fully accomplished yet: mandatory cultural competency training for all new and returning students and free storage access for international, global nomad and low-income students. Although conducted for first years, this year’s cultural competency training faced criticism from many members of the Wooster community. Dinkins says that Dean Smith and Dr. García are working to replace it with a more effective, holistic approach.
“We want the training to talk about the bigger picture. We believe the bigger picture is implicit bias. So, if we can teach students how to identify implicit biases that they may have, it will allow for them to say, ‘okay I see why I’m treating this person like this, maybe I should stop doing that,’” he said.
While administration has since subsidized the cost of storage for a limited number of students, it is still not free. Dinkins considers free storage access to be one of the most important demands to work on moving forward. “I do believe very strongly that if you’re an international student, a student with low-income, even if you’re a student who’s just going to be living far away; I believe all of those students should receive free storage,” he said. “There’s just no question … We should easily be able to find some low-subsidized storage where students don’t have to pay for it.”
Another demand that has required some work and negotiation is the one planning to establish a sexual assault survivor hotline and house. The agreed-upon demands surrounding this included the establishment of an on-call student response group to assist survivors of sexual misconduct; students trained to assists survivors to stay in a program house and for that house to have cell phones that function as an “on-call” system in which at least two functional cell phones would be active each night of the semester to provide students a hotline before, during or after an act of sexual violence occurs. However, according to Ella Lang ’21, the vice president-elect of the Sexual Respect Coalition (SRC), these demands have changed since the Call-in.
“The agreed-upon demands have changed significantly due to concerns about the College being held legally responsible for the house and the advice students may give to those seeking support,” said Lang. “It was made clear in our proposal that the students living in the house would not be acting as counselors, but this was unsatisfactory for them. Additionally, they were concerned about the house being a ‘safe haven’ because under Title IX policy, this space would have to be made accessible to the survivor as well as perpetrator. Because of these reasons, Nathen Fein and Carly Jones requested that all language of the house being a ‘safe haven’ be removed and the purpose of the house change to education instead of advocacy.”
Despite this, Lang says that the SRC is still dedicated to making it a survivor advocacy house. “The Sex Education House is not fulfilling the role of the original demands, but we have not lost sight of those goals. We are going to be continuing to work with Lori Makin-Byrd, Title IX coordinator, to truly make this a survivor advocacy house as it was meant to be,” Lang said.
Another agreed-upon demand was that the College require all new and returning students to complete SafeZone training. According to Dinkins, students are not required to complete this training.
Other demands that have been met include separating the role of Title IX Deputy from the role of the Director of Student Rights and Responsibilities, annual campus climate surveys and secured spaces for multicultural student groups, such as the Organization of Latin American Students and the African Student Union.