Malate Aschalew walked into the first meeting of her five-week SEM 100 class in late September, ready to facilitate discussions about diversity at Syracuse University. But the students in her class had a “different agenda,” she said.

Before Aschalew, a peer reading facilitator for SU’s new first-year forum, could introduce herself, a student raised his hand. She remembers him saying, “We weren’t here when Theta Tau happened. I don’t know why we have to go through these things.” This was the general consensus about the course among her 18 students, Aschalew said.

Aschalew tried to move on to the icebreaker activity, but some students said her questions, which were suggested by the curriculum workbook, were too personal.  

“It was a lot for the first day,” said Aschalew, a sophomore biochemistry major. “We were supposed to play games to introduce ourselves, but they were ready from the jump. They came to the door not trying to be there.”

The next week, Aschalew emailed her lead facilitator and told her that she was quitting and wouldn’t return for the remaining four meetings.

In more than a dozen interviews, first-year students and peer facilitators said the SEM 100 course didn’t accomplish its goal of sparking important conversations. Students said the course had some benefits, and it was an important first effort by SU to address the Theta Tau controversy. But they were ultimately disappointed with its discussions of diversity, inclusion and identity that they said failed to address issues of discrimination and prejudice.

Amanda Nicholson, SU’s assistant provost and dean of student success, told The Daily Orange in September that the unified first-year experience was already being planned before the release of the Theta Tau videos, but the controversy accelerated its campus-wide introduction. SEM 100, as part of the first-year experience, was put together during the summer, according to emails sent to the student body by Chancellor Kent Syverud.

Karen Hall, assistant director of civic engagement and academic advising in the Renée Crown University Honors Program, was one of 20 trainers who worked with facilitators in four-hour training sessions. Hall said in both her capacities as an adviser and professor, first-year students have told her SEM 100 failed to address “the elephant in the room”: issues related to the treatment of community members from underrepresented backgrounds.

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“We value the purpose, but it didn’t hit the mark,” she said. “It went wide of the mark. In fact, if we were using a dartboard analogy, it hit the wall and fell to the floor.”

Kira Reed, co-chair of the First-Year Experience Initiative Steering Committee, said in an email that the university has received feedback from 2,500 SEM 100 students. Students have identified classroom discussion as the “most valuable component,” she added.  

“Students highly rated their impression of their facilitators, the activities tied to the learning outcomes were deemed valuable, and the objectives of the course were met,” Reed said.

Nicholson said in an email that the university is analyzing the effectiveness of SEM 100 and is collecting feedback from facilitators and students. She did not respond to multiple requests for further comment on this story.

At Wednesday’s University Senate meeting, Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly said that Deans Karin Ruhlandt, of the College of Arts and Sciences, and David Van Slyke, of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, will submit recommendations to her regarding the first-year experience by March 1, 2019. Those recommendations will be shared with the SU community, and the goal is to have the adjustments implemented by fall 2020, she said.

SEM 100 was designed to be a space where all first-year and transfer students would be taught to confront implicit bias and develop health, wellness and communication skills. The first week of the seminar in late September came about five months after the initial suspension of the Theta Tau fraternity, which was eventually expelled for the creation of videos showing students engaging in behavior Syverud has called “extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities.”

Hall said the “whole community was traumatized” after Theta Tau and that the university rushed to find a solution.

Olivia DeLorenzo, a peer facilitator and sophomore neuroscience major, said she understands there was pressure after Theta Tau for SU to respond to the outrage on campus, but she doesn’t think the university handled its response well.

“Basically the course, like, skirted around all serious discussion of stuff like race and prejudice, any really intense topics,” DeLorenzo said.  

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Shantelle Willock, a junior broadcast and digital journalism major and peer facilitator, said she was able to get students to open up more when she moved away from the curriculum. The course should have included an educational component so students weren’t being asked to discuss issues they didn’t know about, she added.

Delaney Wehn, a senior public relations and marketing dual major, said one of the activities was “eye-opening” for students because it helped them realize that their “preconceived stereotypes weren’t really correct.” But the course didn’t have enough activities that allowed students to discuss their identities, and the main discussions of her group weren’t productive, she added.  

SEM 100 centered around comedian and political commentator Trevor Noah’s memoir “Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood.” The book details Noah’s experiences in apartheid, a system of government-mandated racial segregation that lasted until the mid-1990s. All first-year students were sent the book during the summer and were told it was required reading.

Kal Russell, a junior transfer studying biology, participated in both SEM 100 and a transfer-specific introductory forum. Transfer students were required to do both. He said SEM 100 was better at discussing contemporary issues, current events and differences in opinion.

While Russell felt the classroom was a safe enough area for people to share their thoughts, he said that since students didn’t choose to take SEM 100, people were “only half participating.”

“We all know why it got started, and it felt like this wasn’t the correct response for the issue,” he said.

Freshman biology major Sky Chiorando said when she received her copy of “Born a Crime,” the letter that came with it told first-year students they would be using the book as a tool to learn about diversity. This didn’t end up being the case, she said.

“We didn’t talk about the book at all, and not much was brought up about diversity,” she said. “It was kind of just everybody’s own experiences.”

Many students in the honors program were frustrated that the book wasn’t more central to the course, Hall said. The book wasn’t discussed in the course until the fourth of five weeks, according to a curriculum guide given to facilitators. Some facilitators said they brought up material outside of the curriculum to help facilitate discussions.  

Hall said one of the course’s faults was a fear of “white fragility,” a term coined in 2011 that refers to the defensiveness of white people when their ideas on race and racism are challenged. Each SEM 100 meeting involved an icebreaker meant to get students talking, but facilitators and students said many of these activities weren’t helpful. Facilitators also said the curriculum limited the depth of their discussions.

The activities prompted students to think about the components to their personal identities and share these with the class. Students told Chasia Marquette, a junior political science major who worked as a peer facilitator, that the activities seemed trivial, she said.

Marquette said she believed the SEM 100 curriculum was designed too quickly and assumed students could not handle in-depth conversations.

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“They don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable, but sometimes you need that discomfort to grow, especially when a lot of students come here from homogenous, white communities and don’t know how to talk about race,” Marquette said.

Liam Mooney, a junior transfer and psychology and forensic science double major who is transgender, said his class also rarely used the book, but his lead facilitator did activities outside the established curriculum. The professor asked several students from underrepresented backgrounds to give class presentations and provide their perspectives.

Mooney said he was asked to give a class presentation about transgenderism. Mooney spent 20 minutes discussing various aspects of transgender identity and defining the differences between sexuality and gender.

Students began to care about an issue when they saw how it affected someone that’s part of their life, Mooney said. He felt his role in giving the presentation was to give his classmates a way to relate to an issue affecting minorities and to try and help stamp out some potential ignorance.

Connor Crowley, a freshman economics major, said that while the conversations he and his classmates had in SEM 100 were important, they would have been more effective with less specific points in each session. The hour and a half they spent in session every week felt like it dragged, he added. He would have preferred the course to take place over a longer period of time and in shorter sessions, he said.

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Crowley and Chiorando both said that one positive to the course was getting to meet new people from different backgrounds. Crowley said he bonded with several of the people in his class.

“Seeing that, yeah, we all come from different places, but now we’re here and now we’re united, I thought that was very cool,” he said.

Students weren’t required to participate in discussions as part of their grade in the course, which was pass/fail. Five facilitators said they let students go before the scheduled end time because discussion was minimal, and the groups would wait in awkward silence for someone to speak. Students could also miss one of the five meetings.  

“The grading in that course is seriously lackluster,” Marquette said. “It was just basically they would pass if they would show up. They didn’t have to participate. They didn’t have to do anything.”

Willock said each week it felt like the course was “just grazing the subject” that was supposed to be discussed. When mental health was discussed in the second week, the discussion was about the resources on campus but never went deeper into discussing mental health issues or stigmas, she said.

At USen meetings earlier in the semester, Nicholson and Reed have addressed future plans to try to improve the first-year experience. A committee comprised of more than 20 faculty members and students worked this summer to create a required three-credit liberal arts course prototype. The course, if approved by USen, would replace an existing humanities or social science course in all non-Arts and Sciences majors.

Nicholson and Reed have said they spoke to leaders of each school and college and have said future meetings are possible. University College has already voted to adopt the program, and the senate will vote to approve or reject the proposal in its December meeting.

Nicholson said that a first-year experience course for diversity and inclusion is now a standard among other universities, peer institutions and New York state universities. 

Five facilitators said that, despite their criticisms of the course, they would participate in the first-year forum again if given the opportunity because they want to help create a more diverse and inclusive campus — even if the first iteration of SEM 100 didn’t turn out the way they expected.

“Even though it didn’t solve all the problems, you have to start somewhere,” Wehn said. “I don’t think it’s realistic to start a three-credit course right off the bat. It was already such a major effort just to do this.”

Hall said creating spaces for conversations on diversity and inclusion is “trial and error” and can’t be done perfectly the first time around, much like cultivating a relationship.

“It is like you had a first date. We wanted to really fall in love and get along well,” she said. “We had an awkward first date and we really didn’t get there, but nobody got hurt. Everybody’s still interested. We can have a second date.”

— Asst. Copy Editor India Miraglia contributed reporting to this article.

Published on November 14, 2018 at 11:55 pm

Contact Colleen: [email protected] | @ColleenEFergus2