Do Panels Make Progress?

Last week’s panel on program houses, which was sponsored by The Sun and the aptly titled STUC, held the promise of reinvigorating our stale debates. Did it succeed?

In some ways, yes. The event allowed minority representatives to publicly articulate their concerns. Zach Murray ’11 noted the academic and social difficulties he faced as a freshman from a “90 percent black” neighborhood. As one of the few minorities in his dorm, he was not made aware of academic services or diversity resources. Ujamaa, he said, provided him with the support system, indeed the family, that would guide his undergraduate experience.

Leyosta Hall, the residence hall director of Akwe:kon, expressed a similar sentiment. In response to the question “must program houses be living spaces?” she noted that the problems faced by minorities are not always resolved by five o’clock — the hour when student services offices close. Indeed, minority students require something “more” than an office. They, just like every other student, need some “safe space” to call their home.

These testimonials helped humanize the houses. Such was a crucial contribution to a discussion University administrators insist is purely economic. It was therefore necessary to portray program houses, to paraphrase Murray, as more than just buildings with beds.

At points, however, the emotional appeals seemed an outright evasion of more concrete questions. Murray, for one, argued that the administration’s decision to review was easy for them because, as a “black house,” Ujamaa was seen as “just beds.”

It is indeed notable that, with the exception of Pastor Sonya Hicks — Ujamaa’s senior faculty fellow — hardly any of the program house representatives made any serious reference either to the recession or the well-established fact that the review process is periodic. No “yes, we understand the University must cut back but...” or “yes, we realize that the process of review is standard and important but...” They seemed to say: You (i.e. the administration) handle practical concerns and we’ll take care of the emotional ones. And never the twain shall meet.

Worse, it was almost as though they believed program houses existed in a vacuum, above the University’s “mundane” concerns. Such was ironic, of course, given Murray’s and other protesters’ complaint that University officials and students had cast “ethnic” program houses aside from normative campus affairs. Murray, in fact, had reinforced Ujamaa’s isolation.

Pastor Hicks grounded her house in context. She noted that attendance at Ujamaa events had declined, as “people have a desire to do something different” and that “people are moving out” because “they don’t want to live in program houses.”

To that end, she favored a more complex framing of the discussion. “The responsibility is unfairly placed on one group,” she stated. “This is not any one person’s fault.” Furthermore, in what appeared to be a direct critique of the panelists, she noted that if we wish to engage in serious discourse we must move beyond our individual frames of reference. Indeed, “if you keep thinking like you think, it’s not going to change.”

Pastor Hicks’ statements were by far the most comprehensive. However, she too failed to come to any practical conclusions. As a friend — an active member of the black community — asked, “What are you going to do about it?” What would any of the panelists do about their complaints?

Perhaps, though, this question is unfair. Was it not foolish to expect that the panelists would have had something new to say before the University had completed its review? Why should we have expected to learn anything about “the future of program houses” — as the panel’s sponsors claimed we would — if there were no conclusions about their present state?

While it was important that the panelists publicly articulate their views, one could have learned the same information just by reading The Sun over the past few weeks. Furthermore, it was clear that most of the audience were involved students who, presumably, already have a good grasp of these issues. What, then, was the use of this panel?

I worry that the panel represents a worrisome trend: that we relish in the spectacle of “important issues” but do not really care for their constructive resolution. Who still remembers, or cares about, the “scandalous” Chi Alpha incident of last semester? Or who actually knows how, if at all, the Jewish and Muslim communities resolved the tension after last semester’s “black flags” incident — the subject of many a dramatic column and news story?

This is not to say that panels are always a bad idea. Certainly, they can foster an important forum for exploring pressing campus concerns. If they are to be productive, they must avoid restating what we already know. Otherwise, they become nothing more than another act of our campus drama.

Judah Bellin is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. He may be reached at

judahbellin@cornellsun.com [8]. For Whom the Bellin Tolls appears alternate Mondays this semester.