Northwestern to Quadruple Safe Spaces for Black Students After Complaints

south-park-safe-space
Tom Ciccotta

According to a task force report out of Northwestern University, administrators are planning to quadruple the number of safe spaces for black students.

The proposal for additional environments for black students came after a 149-page-report on the “Black Student Experience” at Northwestern. The report concluded that black students feel “dissatisfied, exhausted and alienated on campus.” As a result, the report provided 14 recommendations on how the experience for black students could be approved at Northwestern.

The recommendations include increasing the black population amongst both the students and faculty, creating an “academic support hub” for black students, increasing the inclusivity of fraternities and sororities, and quadrupling the spaces where exclusively black students can socialize.

One finding in the data is the sense of diverse Black identities and experiences that cannot all be encompassed in the Black House alone. So it seems like a good moment to call for the creation of new spaces for Black connection and community building, but ones which are open to student definition and creation. Therefore, in addition to the Black House, the task force recommends three space options for making Northwestern accessible to Black students for social purposes. The guidelines for reserving the spaces should be broadly understood and have clearly articulated policies.

The report also suggests that admissions officers at the university should aggressively recruit black students and faculty. To achieve this end, the report suggests that prospective black students should be offered attractive financial-aid packages and black faculty candidates should be offered exciting research opportunities.

Some students interviewed for the report argued that the predominantly white greek life system dictates the campus culture trends that have they now want reversed. “In fact, some African American/Black students go so far as to blame the predominantly White fraternity and sorority community for campus climate issues.”

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity for Breitbart. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com

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