By: Ravae Duhaney

This February, my preschoolers joined their peers across the country to celebrate Black History Month. Though we celebrate the accomplishments of African-Americans every week, that month is special. We engaged in a Black Musician Study, with students investigating instruments, genres, and artists, reading books on Black musical legends, and comparing their lives to our own. A lot of these books are set in the past and focus on the hardships of segregation and unfair treatment.

Recently, during a read aloud about Ray Charles and the challenges he faced as a person of color, one of my students exclaimed, “I don’t like white people!” I seized this as an extremely important teachable moment. We went on to discuss why he felt that way, why his emotions were justified, and why he shouldn’t discriminate or generalize an entire group of people, the way people had against Charles. We thought about people in our school who care about us, help us, and happen to have white skin. This reminded me that if three, four, and five-year olds are able to comprehend hatred and disgust, the pain that is soaring through older children and adults across the country, especially in light of recent events, could not be more searing.

In the face of these realities, we have no time to waste. This school year marked the first in which the majority of public school students are minorities. Our generation has a responsibility to work to ensure that each and every one of them is moving through a system that affirms their identities, shows them they’re valued, and allows them access to the opportunities they have been denied for far too long.

While the “whites only” signs of the 60s have come down, the reality of separate and unequal endures. Alongside glaring gaps in educational, employment and economic opportunity, people of color in this nation face a variety of subtler, no less damaging assumptions. A successful black lawyer hears whispers of affirmative action. A young black boy on a corner is seen as “lurking,” while his white peers “hang out.” A black college student is asked to give “the black perspective” to a seminar full of white students who are never asked to speak on behalf of their entire race.

When my kids hear or see these injustices happen to the people they know and love, they think about what it means for their own futures. Recently, a male student in my class stated “I want dreads when I grow up,” to which a female student responded “you gonna go to jail.” My heart dropped. My co-teacher and I were shocked and saddened to see the stereotypes so internalized in these four- and five-year-old hearts. Leaving school that day, I knew I had to work even harder to affirm their self-worth and the value of our history.

I joined Teach For America to help students who look like me — plain and simple. But now that I’m in the classroom, I’ve found that my students are helping me just as much as I am helping them. At such a young age, they reflect the honesty and challenges of the world, and help me to understand how the world perceives people that look like me and how I perceive myself. They help me to recognize the magnitude of the educational inequity, lack of opportunities, and institutionalized racism across America. And they help me to see the importance of having caring, dedicated individuals fighting these injustices in the classroom.

We have a long way to go as a country before we truly achieve justice for all. To fix the systemic oppression that has created the gross inequality of the present will take the hard, dedicated work of countless leaders and changemakers. We must work toward these long-term changes as well as the immediate, urgent opportunities to change the way our students view themselves and their futures.

As teachers, we can play a central role in this. Every day, we can remind our kids that their thoughts, ideas, identities and opinions are important. We can share our own stories so that when our kids look to the front of the room, they see a little bit of themselves reflected back. We can remind them that they matter, that they always have and that they always will.

Ravae Duhaney is a 2012 graduate of UMBC and Teach For America-Chicago alum. She teaches Pre-Kindergarten at Herzl School of Excellence in Chicago.

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Compiled by the Retriever Weekly Senior Staff

Demand better from chapters engaged in wrongdoing, but don’t group all fraternities together

   Last weekend, The national fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) found itself at the center of controversy concerning misconduct by some of its members. A video capturing some of its members making racist chants has revived debates about the culture of college fraternities across the country.

A video surfaced on Youtube and Twitter depicting members of SAE’s University of Oklahoma chapter chanting racial slurs against African Americans. The young men in the video chant “There will never be a n***** in SAE, You can hang ‘em from a tree but they’ll never sign with me, There will never be a n***** in SAE.”

Their actions have provoked condemnation from various parties. Brad Cohen, the organization’s national president, asserted that “ “I was not only shocked and disappointed but disgusted by the outright display of racism in the video.” David Boren the University of Oklahoma’s president, called the video’s contents “reprehensible and contrary to all of our values.”

Outcry over the incident has progressed to constructive action as well. Students at the University of Oklahoma have protested on campus in the days following the video’s release. The university has expelled two students found to have led the chant in the video.

Unfortunately, fraternities have been involved in reprehensible misconduct before. At times, this has involved racism and bigotry. In other cases, it has involved sexual assault or excessive hazing. In the eyes of some, these problems stem from faults within the overriding culture of fraternities themselves.

Yet it is important to note that not all Greek life organizations engage or tolerate such abhorrent actions. Nor can any one fraternity, SAE included, be broadly associated with hazing, racism, or sexual misconduct. To claim such would be unfair to individual fraternity chapters that instead demonstrate upstanding character.

Susan DuMont, who has worked as Coordinator of Student Life for UMBC’s Greek life, pointed to her own experiences working with UMBC chapters to support this point. She pointed to UMBC’s own SAE chapter as an example, saying that “the UMBC chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon certainly does not need to be taught not to use racially charged hate speech.”

DuMont also emphasized the importance of diversity in UMBC’s fraternities and sororities, saying that “Our Greek Community is almost exactly reflective of the diversity in the student body.”

Across college campuses, many fraternities have worked to address and prevent the sort of wrongdoing that has surrounded their counterparts. The University of Utah’s Phi Gamma Delta chapter recently met with Latino students to proactively discuss race and identity issues. At Dartmouth, fraternities have held campus forums to prevent campus sexual assault and have incorporated bystander intervention training into recruitment and rushing.

Other chapters have have gone beyond addressing on-campus issues and have expanded a constructive imprint in their communities. Many fraternities engage in service projects within their surrounding communities or focus their efforts to highlight ongoing social issues.

The solution to addressing misconduct among fraternities may not be to condemn or demand change from fraternities as whole. This unfairly groups all fraternities and their individual chapters together, regardless of their actual conduct. A more constructive strategy may be to demand greater accountability from chapters individually.

Campuses themselves may have a major role to play in this regard. As DuMont conceded, “the challenge is offering the education and intervention that each chapter needs and offices can only respond to what they know about.” Student bodies then could foster the overriding culture that demands accountability from its Greek life organizations on each campus.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/us/fraternity-closed-at-oklahoma-after-video-of-racist-chant.html?_r=1

http://abcnews.go.com/US/video-purportedly-shows-sigma-alpha-epsilon-frat-members/story?id=29490305

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/recruiting/football/story/_/id/12454429/oklahoma-sooners-recruit-jean-delance-explains-decommitment

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/03/09/quick-response-from-the-nations-deadliest-fraternity-to-a-racist-video/

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/university-oklahoma-expels-two-students-tied-racist-chant-video-n320831

http://www.newsrecord.org/college_living/black-greek-organizations-break-stereotypes-educate-students/article_8358642c-bd5e-11e4-8369-8b7371a32287.html

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/07/amid-concern-over-troubling-reports-fraternities-seek-reshape-image/hbGOjFACVuTDh5DbjG4VlM/story.html

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/local/2015/01/28/uvm-fraternity-plans-frigid-fundraiser-troops/22478535/

http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/ut-students-engage-fraternity-tackle-racism-24660.shtml

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• Much of the current myUMBC was an experiment. We’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Times, technology, and people have changed. Now we're ready to take what we learned and implement some new ideas.
• Some features simply aren’t being used.
• A philosophical change of heart on how we approach some problem, especially given the changing technology landscape.
• We need to make things work better for mobile users.

• Start
• Guide - Replaces Topics. A single page with access to the resources you need most, including a complete collection of resources for when you need something special.
• Events - Redesigned. A better way to browse events on campus using interest-based calendars rather than by date alone.
• Explore - Replaces Community. This section will help you keep up with the community buzz.
• Groups - Minor Updates. Easier access to the groups you participate in and ways to find new groups of interest to you.
• Help - Redesigned. The documentation you need, as well as a quick way to request help from experts.

• Group homepages now feature an activity feed with upcoming events, news and general information.
• You can Follow all groups you're interested in -- similar to how a Twitter account works. You will no longer need to "join" some groups and "follow" others. All members of a group must be invited by an admin.
• News Stories have been renamed Posts and can now be used to more easily share and promote group information, including on the group homepage. These posts can also be Pinned or marked Important, giving groups even more control over how their content is displayed and promoted.
• A new email notification feature gives Followers more options for how they choose to receive information from groups: All, Important Only, or None.
• Gone the way of the dodo: Discussions, Media and Barks are being removed in favor of posts, which are a more centralized way to share all content.

• You no longer select a specific run-time; just a single day when you want your post promoted.
• It’s first-come, first-served. To increase the chances your post will be promoted on the myUMBC homepage on a given day, be sure to submit it with plenty of lead time.
• A group can only promote a limited number of posts at a time.
• You can no longer target specific audiences. Instead, your promotion must be applicable to everyone to be approved.
• We will still be using an approval process for all posts to ensure the content shared is relevant and abides by University policies--and that the system isn’t being abused.