Student-leaders gather to demand more action from administration
Every few weeks during the academic year, Wabash faculty members gather in the Goodrich Room at the Lilly Library to discuss any important matters at hand. While the meeting usually goes unnoticed by much of the student body, a silent protest organized by ’shOUT during the beginning of the March 19 meeting brought many students out to the event.
The demonstration was organized to express dissatisfaction with campus administration’s response to the recent hate crime that occurred at Delta Tau Delta on February 29, in which homophobic slurs and phrases were spray painted on the exterior of the fraternity house.
“The protest was arranged to demand more institutional support for queer students and to develop better communication between the administrators and the rest of Wabash,” said ’shOUT President Javion Montgomery ’27. “[It was also] to ask for people that are not a part of marginalized communities to start advocating for them in spaces where it may seem like marginalized voices aren’t being heard or taken seriously.”
The demonstration saw student leaders from across campus flanking the staircase leading from the entrance of Lilly Library into the Goodrich Room, silently holding signs of support for their fellow students.
During the protest, while most students remained silent, Montgomery and ’shOUT Vice President Josh Massaquoi ’26 conferred with Dean of Students Gregory Redding ’88 to discuss the purpose and goals of the protest.
“I was really appreciative of Javion and Josh, who took some time out to talk things through,” said Redding. “[We] at least started a conversation. I thought that was really positive.”
The conversation between the three revolved around the demands that ’shOUT had brought to the protest, which notably included, among others, a standard procedure for handling bias incidents, an administrative effort to bolster diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), completion of DEI training by administrators and more institutional support overall.
“A lot of the things [on the list] are actually things that we do,” said Redding. “But I don’t know that that’s always been clearly communicated to students.”
Dean Redding went on to state that the administration participates in “required trainings that fall in the DEI category” and that he personally has an attitude that groups such as ’shOUT and La Alianza “have a different status” due to the groups being tied to students’ identities.
’shOUT, however, still questions whether the issues are due to a lack of communication or a lack of institutional support.
“[During] the conversation that we had with Dean Redding, it just seemed like most of the things we were asking for were things that they [the College] said they are already doing on campus,” said Montgomery. “To which Josh and I both responded, ‘Where?’”
This is largely due to the response by the administration after the incident initially occurred, particularly with the official statement to students and faculty, which lacked details of the event as well as what disciplinary and investigative actions the administration were taking.
“Students shouldn’t have to be the ones telling faculty members about what’s going on on everybody’s campus,” said Montgomery. “That’s ridiculous.”
After Dean Redding sent a follow-up email exactly two weeks after the incident occurred on March 14 and The Bachelor published an article in the March 15, 2024 issue entitled “Delta Tau Delta defaced”, students and faculty members began to understand the full scope of what had happened at Delt on February 29.
“The faculty is having a delayed outrage,” said Massaquoi. “They’ve just now learned about [the incident].”
This played into the dynamic of the faculty meeting itself, in which former ’shOUT president Luis Rivera ’25 attended as a guest.
“There was definitely acknowledgement of the mishandling of the situation by some members of the administration,” said Rivera. “They realized that faculty needs to be aware of the situation and given resources to support those students.”
The communication error by administration is currently an object of discussion within the administration team to better prepare for any incidents like this one that may happen again in the future.
“We’ve been thinking through our communication strategies and how we can be better at that,” said Redding. “We’ve talked as a team about how we can get better at our postvention protocols. We are trying to get better at understanding how to provide that sustained support, which I don’t think we’ve solved yet, but it’s something we’re working on.”
Postvention reaction refers to the way in which the administration does their best to not only give support in the short-term aftermath of an incident, but also the sustained support that may linger for affected groups of people. This is an important consideration, especially for groups of individuals that could benefit from extra, institutional support based on their personal experiences due to their identity.
“It is the administration’s job to represent all students on campus equally and fairly,” said Massaquoi. “And the best way to do that sometimes is to represent some groups more heavily by giving them more support because they might go through different struggles that other groups don’t go through.”
Representation and support have also been big topics in the past three weeks, demonstrated by the seemingly combined yet separate efforts of the students, faculty and administrators to show support for the individuals affected by the incident. The disconnect stems once again from the issue of communication, and yet all three groups are putting effort towards attempting to support each other.
“The way the campus really rallies and makes it clear that these malicious points of view are marginalized points of view is encouraging,” said Redding. “I just don’t want to have the need for it.”
While everyone agrees that communication is a long term issue that needs to be addressed, ’shOUT is still focused on the current issue of getting the proper level of support from the administration.
“The ball’s now in your court, administration,” said Rivera. “You have our list of demands, it’s time to address them and work with us to ensure that queer students are supported on campus better than they have been in the past.”