When postelection tensions began breaking out on campuses across the country, Teresa A. Nance, associate vice provost for diversity and inclusion at Villanova University, felt sympathetic but insulated.
“That’s too bad it’s happening to them,” she remembers thinking. “Nothing like that could happen here.”
And then it did. A black female student walking in a transit tunnel on campus said she was pushed to the ground by several white men shouting President-elect Donald J. Trump’s name. The alleged assault is still under investigation.
The incident has shaken this Roman Catholic college of 10,000 in the Philadelphia suburbs. It’s spurred some to action, while leading others to question how warm the welcome really is for them and for students like them — students of color, those of different sexual orientation, immigrants, women, people of different faiths.
Across the country, Mr. Trump’s election has led to both political protests and hateful harassment and violence, and campuses like Villanova have not been immune. Without question, the results of the campaign, the most divisive in years, have heightened such conflicts, but they have also thrown into public view division and discord that many say was there all along.
And for some who believe in change, it has strengthened their resolve.
An Academic Response
Ms. Nance has been Villanova’s chief diversity officer for little more than a year — she is the first to hold the position — but she has taught at the university, where she specializes in interpersonal communication and African-American rhetoric, for 38 years.
So her reaction to the alleged attack was not just as an administrator but as an academic. She began to think through how the university might use its classrooms to respond. She reached out to the provost, Patrick G. Maggitti, and together they drafted an email to faculty members on November 14, encouraging them to take time during class to talk about the incident and other postelection anxieties.
“Even though other offices on campus may be mobilized to deal with students’ most immediate needs,” they wrote, “our faculty voices can have an outsized impact as their teachers and mentors.”
Mr. Maggitti says he liked the approach because, though voluntary, it had the potential to touch every student. Some students might even be part of five different discussions in five different classes.
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The pair intentionally left the “how” vague — “It was an invitation, not a mandate,” Ms. Nance says. Some faculty members gave over entire class periods to free-flowing conversations, while others briefly addressed recent events and moved on to regularly scheduled coursework. Others didn’t talk about the election or its aftermath at all.
In hindsight, Mr. Maggitti acknowledges their message could have included more links to teaching resources on issues of diversity, as well as additional information about campus policies on inclusion and student conduct. And he says that the classroom conversations can’t be the end of the college’s response.
Villanova was already working to diversify its hiring and in January plans to offer a weeklong workshop for faculty members to help them take the principles of intergroup dialogue — facilitated conversations among students from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds — and apply them to their courses. It’s clear they’ll have to do more, Mr. Maggitti says. “Things aren’t fixed because of a community conversation and a nice email.”
Still, both administrators say that this initial effort was true to Villanova’s institutional mission and identity. The university was founded nearly 175 years ago by the Order of St. Augustine. Even today, Augustinian Catholic tradition emphasizes the importance of community. Learning isn’t an individual pursuit, St. Augustine believed, and community is key to intellectual growth and engagement.
It seemed appropriate, Ms. Nance says, to look to the classroom to help make sense of such a troubling episode. “It’s part of our fabric,” she says.
“I teach at an Augustinian Catholic school where we talk about right and wrong. I don’t apologize for it. It’s who we are.”
A Shared Pledge
Even as Villanova’s administration was coming up with a way to turn recent events into a teachable moment, the university’s professors were crafting their own response.
A little more than 24 hours after the transit-tunnel assault, a half-dozen faculty members began to work together to draft a letter to the campus community. It amounted to a shared pledge, condemning the incidents — professors and others say they have heard of at least five more hateful harassment incidents since Election Night — and affirming university values.
I teach at an Augustinian Catholic school where we talk about right and wrong. I don’t apologize for it. It’s who we are.
Calling the life of a scholar “a sacred trust and a deeply felt duty,” they wrote, “We stand in solidarity with those who pursue what is decent and true, and we stand united in opposition to those who would do harm to our students, our values, our community, and our democratic traditions.”
Within the next 24 hours, the letter attracted more than 300 signatures, or about a third of the university’s faculty members. Another 50 asked that their names be added to the letter after it was published, says Jerusha Conner, one of its authors.
Ms. Conner, who chairs Villanova’s Faculty Congress, says she simply couldn’t stay silent. “I had students in my office,” she says. “They’re scared, they’re hurting.”
Like many of her fellow professors, Ms. Conner took time in class to discuss the recent episodes. She works mainly with graduate education students, classroom teachers themselves, so much of the discussion revolved around different pedagogical models and the role and responsibility of teachers in processing world events. She shared her own response after the 2001 terrorist attacks, how she broke down in front of her students.
Ms. Conner and another author of the faculty letter, Catherine Warrick, an associate professor of political science, say the discussions were a good start but argue that Villanova administrators need to do more to ensure a continued open conversation on campus.
In particular, they say, faculty members need more guidance about what constitutes free speech in a classroom at a private institution, and where the lines that violate the student code of conduct could be crossed.
Villanova can be a conservative campus, Ms. Warrick says, and after the election, “some students are glorying in picking the right side.”
They also hope there will be transparency about any future incidents. Ms. Conner says she first learned about the assault allegations in the local newspaper.
And even as they, too, talk about the importance of community, the professors wonder if students, especially those who feel threatened by recent events, are receiving contradictory messages: Yes, stick to your principles, but, please, let’s all get along.
If students stifle their emotions or critiques, Ms. Warrick says, “I’m afraid that the result will be deep cynicism or deep disengagement.”
Real, Raw Voices
After four years and as many majors, Brendan Carchidi is well-versed in what he calls “Villanova politeness.”
“People will wait for five minutes while you walk up,” he says, “and hold the door for you.”
So when Mr. Carchidi and his friend Madiah Gant, a sophomore, set out to organize a vigil in response to the election and all that has happened since, they went looking for real voices, raw voices. They sent emails out across campus, inviting people to anonymously submit testimonies and reflections about their own experiences. The responses poured in. A sexual-assault survivor wrote about feeling unsafe walking alone at night. A black student told of having a racial epithet written on his bathroom mirror in shaving cream. One woman shared her struggles with mental illness.
On Thursday evening, following a university-organized community meeting, several hundred people gathered on the steps of one of the campus’s oldest chapels as a Muslim student recited an Islamic prayer. Then, their faces illuminated by candlelight, students stepped forward and read from the anonymous emails, interspersed with prayers from other religious traditions.
We wanted to get the whole community to feel that, yes, these are their problems, too.
Mr. Carchidi and Ms. Gant had recruited students from some of the more-prominent organizations on campus to do the reading. A member of the university’s national championship basketball team. One of the campus’s popular tour guides. The leader of a service-learning club. A fraternity brother, his group’s name on his sweatshirt, gave voice to the words of a student coming to terms with being gay.
The Big Men — and Women — on Campus spoke for those who have frequently felt most marginalized.
“We wanted to get the whole community to feel that, yes, these are their problems, too,” Ms. Gant says.
At the vigil were the deans of every college. The president, Rev. Peter M. Donohue, changed his travel schedule to attend. Mr. Maggitti, the provost, forgot his coat but stayed the whole hour anyway.
“We had the opportunity,” Mr. Carchidi says, “to speak to an audience.”
Mr. Carchidi and his classmates say they are saddened by the events of the last couple of weeks. They are fearful, angry, hurt.
But they are also, strangely, energized.
For months, they have been pressing for greater diversity in hiring, for bias training, and, particularly, for a more inclusive curriculum. It only makes sense, Mr. Carchidi points out, at an institution founded on the teachings of St. Augustine, a man who was born in North Africa, in modern-day Algeria, and spent most of his life there.
Even before the election, the students felt like they were making some progress. Administrators, they say, were receptive to their ideas. Each college has established a diversity task force. But, Ms. Gant says, “we need to speed it up. I feel like the time is now.”
Villanova niceness is a real thing. People really do hold the door, even in a bitterly whipping wind. In the days since the transit-tunnel attack, dozens and dozens of students have signed up to walk peers who are fearful to and from class — far exceeding the requests for such escorts.
The niceness is real, but so, too, are the divisions.
Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.
