On July 7th 2020, President Beebe again addressed the campus via phone q&a session. The day before more than fifty students and concerned community members organized to send the same set of questions to President Beebe's email and the q&a session email intake. The questions asked why the administration continues to silence student dissent and ignore student demands, what lasting policy changes would be made going forward and for updates on the student conduct process following Cardinalli's blackface video. No response was sent to any of the emails, furthermore President Beebe failed to address any of the questions during his q&a session.
[update 7/16/2020 Alumni are working to get the questions posed by more than 50 students and community members answered] The call did address the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directive to deport international students if they were not attending in person classes. Vice President of Student life Dr. Edee Schulze noted that due to hybrid and in-person classes, students "from other countries are not in danger of being deported." Neither Dr. Schulze nor President Beebe condemned the move by ICE, nor offered any words of support for international students. In the public statement to KEYT news, Westmont again did not offer any words of support for international students, but did make sure to highlight that they were "the right size to respond to crisis situations and this is where our students benefit." President Beebe opened the call by highlighting his "Quaker upbringing" and noted that "Dr. Martin Luther King (sic) was a hero to Quakers." He continued, noting how Quakers funded various aspects of Dr. King's work, and praising Dr. King's faith before pivoting to "the great effort to try and understand how best to appropriate people from the past who've influenced us... I hope that as a college community we will retain a posture of continuing to learn, continuing to have, uh, a disposition to take in new information, and to change and adjust as we learn new things." He then noted that because of the "conversation," he "had opportunity to connect with an alum, (pause) that, uh, (pause) a Black alum, and I initially called him an African American which is the phrase that I used for much of my adult life. (sic)" He described how this "Black alum" prefers to be called "Black" rather than "African American" because of his ancestry. President Beebe used this "teachable moment" to underscore that he wants "the opportunity to reach out to our alums, (pause) uh, um, (pause) various backgrounds, and uh, and ethnicities, and really begin to understand both their experience at Westmont, and how we can do a better job, uh, as we move forward." After which he once again highlighted the "martyr" Dr. King, and highlighted a phrase "[Dr. King] certainly borrowed from others: ...the responsible Christian has a bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other." From this quote the president pivoted to his "own discipline and philosophy of religion" and "one of [his] own favorite thinkers Jaroslav Pelikan," a white male American scholar of the history of Christianity, Christian theology, and medieval intellectual history at Yale University, and his "landmark study: Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture." After plugging the book and its various depictions of Jesus, President Beebe vocally pondered: "how we [can] develop a greater capacity to listen. And part of this is developing a greater capacity to listen to the most aggrieved members of our community. And I want this to be something that, uh, we do to the best of our capacity. That we develop an empathetic orientation, uh , a really (pause,) uh um, essential (extended pause) capacity to feel what others have experienced (sic)." After this intro, the President said that "conversations are underway and will continue into the coming year to contextualize why the chapel was built and what we need to do to continue moving forward." He reminded listeners of the "tragic history" of Nancy Voskuyl, and the "wonderful history" in the design of "every piece" of the chapel, before describing that "as we have recognized some of the complexity of our contemporary moment, we wanted to make some changes, and begin the process of expanding the conversation and also expanding the repertoire of images, uhh, in the chapel (sic)." He did not confirm that the racist and colonial White Jesus will be permanently removed from the chapel and failed to mention the critical role student organizing played in creating the "conversation" and advocating for institutional change. After the update on the chapel window, President Beebe highlighted "curricular innovations" via a "revitalized and repurposed" ethnic studies minor. He said that he thinks it is a "really wonderful rekindling of something that's been at the heart of Westmont for many years." He failed to mention that the minor, after it's conception alongside the gender studies minor circa 2005, had fallen into obscurity until the spring 2019 student demands. At that time, many of the classes required for the minor were no longer offered and there were no faculty contacts listed for the ethnic studies minor in the College Catalog. He did mention that professors across the college were "thinking anew about what it means to approach their disciplines with fresh eyes, attentive ears, and curious spirits." He then highlighted the work of white theater arts Professor John Blondel, but did not make mention of the various BIPOC faculty whos course offerings have tackled issues of race and white supremacy since their hiring and were pivotal to pushing other faculty to reconsider their teaching pedagogy and revise their syllabi. President Beebe announced a "college wide implicit-bias training." Introducing the training he said; "what I've loved about this concept is the way in which it brings to light the fact that all carry subconscious prejudice (sic), and we develop it without even realizing it." Professor Carmel Saad will lead five sessions of the training in both the fall and spring to teach "how to understand implicit bias, how to take a broader view of diversity, how to understand equity, how to be committed to inclusion, and what does it mean to develop intercultural competence." In response to questioning about the number of BIPOC faculty, President Beebe "just wanted to give a stat." He proceeded to list the number of faculty hired and their demographic breakdown. He then noted that "85% have stayed." He did not give demographic breakdowns for the number of professors who have stayed. He then stated "the fact that we have been able to diversify our faculty shows a multi-year commitment to this, as a priority, and it will continue." Continuing on he again "wanted to amplify our focus on diversity, global engagement, and intercultural competency in recruiting students." In the efforts of recruiting more diverse students and faculty he praised "our great foundation which we have been able to build upon. According to president Beebe "the diversity of the student body has been raised from a little under thirty percent, to a little under forty five percent. All of this has taken time, effort, and significant increase in scholarship and money." Even though "we still have a long way to go... we do have some important and impressive progress that we've made (sic)." After speaking to "diversity" within the student body and faculty, he once again highlighted the hiring of Blake Thomas, the interim director of Intercultural Programs. While he did highlight that Blacke is Black, he failed to mention that Blake was only hired as a one year interim after Dr. Edee Schulze's cancellation of the national search process for the upcoming Center for Diversity and Global Engagement. He also mentioned that Carol Huston, a member of the board of trustees, will be coming to campus once a week to "work on issues of diversity, global engagement, intercultural competence and as an advisor to [the president] as [he] work our way through this." He then listed off a number of Black Pastors who's video sermons he deeply appreciated and considered valuable "resources". He also reminded the callers of the previously announced partnership with David Baliey of Arrabon, and commended "the way in which he engages at a level which builds trust, and helps lower barriers of suspicion between different groups." Throughout this section of the call, President Beebe framed the college's new connections with various Black Pastors, leaders and intellectuals as "resources." The only non-black "resource" was the "highly controversial suggestions, conclusions, and observations" of Dr. Robin DiAngelo's book: White Fragility. It was also announced that "later this fall" Westmont will host a "seminar" on "how law enforcement happens in Santa Barbara County" featuring District Attorney Joyce Dudley, Chief of Police Lori Luhnow, and Sherif Bill Brown. President Beebe bade clear that he has "high regard for these three individuals" and found them "incredibly helpful... in terms of helping our community really have some of the most progressive policies in terms of how law enforcement is carried out so that we can have constructive engagement and not just.. huge concerns about the integrity and ethics of our law enforcement individuals." Before transitioning to COVID-19 related announcements and q&a, President Beebe made the following statement: "As we move forward, or before we move forward (chuckle), I really just want to emphasize again, how important this conversation is to us, that all parties, all parts of the college community are going to be involved in it. And I hope that throughout the year, that we can exercise patience and forbearance with one another, as we learn to live together with difference, learn to respect difference, but also make significant headway. On, on such a critical issue (sic)." The unedited audio is attached below, and the transcript can be viewed here.
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