School of Business, Hispanic student group latest to issue statements on racial issues at KU

A group of students identifying itself as Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk takes the stage and reads a list of diversity and inclusion related demands for Kansas University during KU's town hall forum on race Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2015, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union, as KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, far right, who was moderating the forum, looks on. Sign language interpreter Kim Bates, left, translated throughout the event.

Kansas University’s School of Business and an organization that supports Hispanic students are the latest groups to weigh in on racial issues that have sparked student debates at KU for the past week.

The KU business school has scheduled a forum to discuss issues of race and equality for later this month, and the Hispanic American Leadership Organization, or HALO, issued a statement saying it supports black students who say they are being discriminated against on campus.

HALO president Alex Villagran, a junior from Garden City, said that although Hispanics are marginalized, too, he believes anti-black racism is the most important issue right now.

“We could get into the ‘Oppression Olympics,’ and we could talk about what group is the most oppressed,” he said.

“Every issue matters, but right now this needs to be the focal point. This is one that has been long overdue to be addressed.”

HALO appears to be the first group to include tangible “self-reforms” it pledges to pursue to improve the campus climate for black peers.

Plans include requiring current and future HALO board members to receive “cultural competency training”; celebrating Afro-Latino culture through an Afro-Latino Week involving a “variety of relevant groups”; and working with KU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and other resources to set up workshops addressing “anti-blackness in Latino culture.”

“We must do more than release statements,” the group’s statement reads. “As community leaders on campus we must do more to support our brothers and sisters who are hurting and combat anti-black racism. As such, HALO will do what it can to elevate the voices of those who are being silenced.”

Villagran cited examples of racist acts against black students on campuses nationwide, as well as police shootings that have been in the news. He said Hispanics are not “exempt” from anti-black racism, either.

The HALO statement also pledges support for 15 diversity and inclusion related demands of KU by a group of about a dozen primarily black students calling themselves Rock Chalk Invisible Hawk. The group read a list of demands during a town hall forum KU held last week to discuss racial issues.

Villagran said members of that group were not involved in crafting HALO’s statement. He said he and the HALO vice president drafted the statement, posted Saturday to the group’s Facebook page, because they felt it was important to have a prompt response to the KU forum.

Villagran said HALO has fallen short of addressing the issue of racism, particularly in not better promoting its Afro-Latino sub-identity. He said they came up with steps outlined in the statement relatively quickly but that they are feasible and “definitely necessary.”

“We should be using all our privileges, all our opportunities to spread the word,” he said. “I’m not saying that Latino issues are not important, but I’m saying these at the moment are the most important.”

Business school reacts

The KU administration expects to share information this week about how the university will move forward on the issue of race, according to a message released Friday by Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little.

School of Business dean Neeli Bendapudi, who also attended last week’s forum, issued a message Monday echoing that of the chancellor and announcing a related upcoming forum for the School of Business.

“Diversity and equity are foundational values for our university, but we are clearly not living up to these values,” Bendapudi wrote. “It is my hope that here in the School of Business, we can continue this important conversation to move forward.”

The School of Business forum on diversity and equity is planned for 4 p.m. Nov. 30 in Summerfield Hall, room 427.

Faculty from at least two other academic departments — African and African American Studies, and American Studies — have released statements criticizing KU’s administration for failing to respond adequately to racism and racial disparity on campus and supporting black students’ demands.

“We are a department committed to a fair and just campus, and we hold ourselves accountable for how we look and function as a unit,” according to the American Studies statement, signed by department chairwoman Jennifer Hamer. “We have consciously built a multiracial/multiethnic faculty. Our courses emphasize the historical and contemporary understandings and complexities of race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, labor and class, and religion.”

Graduate students from the department of American Studies and the department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies shared similar sentiments in written statements.

On Monday afternoon, a KU graduate ended a hunger strike that he had been staging since Friday on the KU campus.