By Talia McCaw
In the wake of the protests of 2016 through 2017, The Evergreen State College created the vice president and vice provost for Equity and Inclusion position. This position inevitably brought Chassity Holliman-Douglas to our school. Throughout her time here, she has worked to implement equity and inclusion for the entire student body. As of this month, Chassity will be leaving this institution; taking with her a newfound Evergreen family she can always come back to.
“Leaving the institution is so bittersweet for me because there was so much more I wanted to do. I was only here for two years and one can’t accomplish everything in that short amount of time. When I came to Evergreen I must say that the community was in a traumatic state and it wasn’t just students but also staff, administration, and our senior leadership team. I feel like [people] were trying to figure out what in the world had just happened and how do we move forward?”
For students who witnessed the build up of tensions over the school year of 2016-2017, having Douglass come to our school and make real change is very important. Many of us that had experienced the 2017 protests attended each of the interviews for the new position of vice provost, because a lack of action was not a choice.
Senior, Mia Milton, and I recently spoke with Chassity about her time here at Evergreen. The informal conversation setting with Douglas in her office, reminded us of the first time students shared space with her, as a candidate for this position. The hiring of Douglas came very shortly after the incidents, protests, media coverage, threats, and demands of the 2017 protests. Many marginalized students remember that interview room, a room full of Brown and, mainly, Black students. They felt unsafe, unheard, discouraged and forgotten. This was in the wake of various protests which were traumatic incidents that communities of color on campus were having to endure.
“[Before Douglas arrived] we had a community debrief but it felt like a cover-up. So in the midst of everything happening [Douglas] making new things as far as replacing Day of Absence/Day of Presence, that was really big for students…As far as attendance, there are a lot of students from that spring [of 2017] that took off,” said Milton.
Many students of color left Evergreen after losing access to Day of Absence/Day of Presence, the two voluntary days during which our school hosted a community custom to discuss race relations, based on a play by Douglas Turner Ward. This was during and after a strenuous and still tense political climate, following two peaceful student protests calling out Evergreen for its lack of institutional student support. This lack of support continues to affect all marginalized people, including those who are undocumented and people of color.
“I want to make sure that I’m being clear that it was not my decision to not do Day of Absence/Day of Presence. If I’m hired and a decision is made to not do this event that has been a standing tradition for the community and then I’m told that the expectation is that I will create something else…that’s what I have to do,” Douglas shares.
In the fall of 2016 through fall of 2017, retention rates were down roughly 4 percent for all undergraduates from the previous school year. According to the Evergreen Retention Trend Web of 2018, retention rates were down 4 percent for Hispanic/Latinx & White students, 10 percent for Black students, as well as down 15 percent and 3 percent for multiple demographics of our Native students. On the other hand that same year, retention went up 5 percent for Asian students. While these are all umbrella terms for a wide range of identities, it reminds us that there’s still multicultural, diverse, black and brown students here despite everything. But also that many have left the student body, and not by choice.
During our conversation, Milton spoke of the transition from Day of Absence to Equity Symposium, and what it means for many POC students at Evergreen. “They’re telling you, ‘you can’t do this,’ but the students really want this. Call it by a different name but bring back what we did. I think that’s why it was so hard and why attendance was so low. I think at [the first Equity Symposium] people didn’t feel like their work really mattered,” Mia said.
Douglas responded saying, “It does [matter]. There’s no way I can know exactly what y’all went through. Even now, I’m still hearing different things about it and I’m like that really happened?…It’s just unbelievable to me. If I would have been here I would have had a different experience in this role.”
In the wake of the 2016-2017 protests, students were asking for accommodations that the institution could not provide. Student demands were never fully met and the institution never allowed time to hear from the student body before taking steps forward. The students demanded that the institution protect them in the same way it currently works to retain it’s first-year students.
“I think there are people like me and other students who have so much trauma from spring [of 2017]. There’s a lot of things that people don’t know…happened, I think you’ve done the best you can in your amount of time,” said Milton.
It is beautiful who has come in and left a remarkable impact on our lives at Evergreen. Raquel Salinas, a previous coordinator of Student Support Programs, First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services, helped lead a focus group with students of color, to see what was working for them and what wasn’t at Evergreen. They wanted to investigate why some students of color stay at Evergreen and why some leave. They wanted insight as to why they chose Evergreen, stayed here, and recommendations for how to support the retention of students of color. Student Support Services heard from students about what was working for them and what wasn’t.
Some of the recurring complaints were that in on campus housing: there were students who had never encountered the concept of privilege, few or no Resident Assistants (RAs) of color, and a general lack of community. Student voices led Jonathan Leggette, a senior, activist, and First Peoples staff to create Legacy Hall. This housing space for students of color creates community and shares collective space across significant differences. In this endeavor, student input and action was able to be backed up by the institution. This year, Evergreen has removed Legacy Hall and other community-based housing. The tensions in housing only illuminated where the institution could do better and showed when student input is given, the campus culture shifts. Multicultural, Trans, and Queer Support Services has a history on this campus of valuing student creativity and knowlegdge. The recently established Student Equity and Arts Lounge (SEAL) was created, due to student input.
“I continue to be proud of the space that students [had the chance to] create with the Students Equity and Arts Lounge. We can always identify more spaces for students to be able to gather and congregate and enjoy one another…We need spaces like The SEAL, like First Peoples, like our previous Trans and Queer Center. We need all of those spaces and we also need a campus where our students can move freely, see one another and feel like Evergreen belongs to them and they belong to Evergreen,” Douglas said. “One of the things I said I wanted to do was create space for sharing experiences and actually learn to hear one another, and move forward and share what our truths were. We were striving to understand what our experiences were in spring 2017 and what we really need from the college in order to move forward together.”
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There were many protests throughout the year of 2016-2017. Each protest was directed towards marginalized students: especially Black and Brown students. In spring quarter of 2017, students planned to visit various classrooms that students had shared their experiences of descrimination within the community. In support of these students, they made fliers to explain why they were there and asked teachers for consent before they entered the buildings. They only made it to one of the teacher’s classrooms, Bret Weinstein’s, where they were invited in for their peaceful protest that led to student demands.
Many marginalized students remember that room full of students. They felt unsafe, unheard, discouraged and forgotten. That was in the wake of various protests and traumatic incidents, which communities of color on campus were having to endure. These students were terrified. Black, LGBTQIAA+ and disabled students were banned from the school. Incidents with Police Services, Residential and Dining Services, the Conduct Code, Student Wellness Center and the Title IX office were just the beginning. Douglas’s arrival was an opportunity for someone to hold the institution accountable, but how can one person do all that?
Douglas has allowed us to create a more informed space, despite so much confusion around her position. There wasn’t a clear understanding of what her position would do or achieve for the student body. Despite all of that, she has been a strategic leader for the college and worked to administratively push Inclusive Excellence. She did this by instilling policies and goals to advance Inclusion and Equity. Douglas was overseeing First Peoples, Access Services and TRIO that worked directly with students to confirm they’re receiving support. After meeting with directors and hearing from students, Douglas would take their concerns to the higher level.
What’s difficult is building that trust when positions here are so confusing to navigate. A lot of people are uncomfortable with police services, but the police services community review board that had staff, faculty and student voices was disbanded. A committee built to review police conduct on campus and their relationship with the student body. Students realized they didn’t have enough student voice involved because the board wasn’t serving or protecting them. The board was disbanded and they recommended that it be reformed with student input. We currently have cops on campus in riot gear. “To us that’s unnecessary but it’s happening, it’s getting enacted. Students aren’t gonna feel safe to talk about it unless someone is outreaching or there’s a person for that,” Milton said during our group conversation.
“What you’re describing to me reminds me of the Equity Council. When I came here I was excited to see that we had a body of people already doing this work. After all of the trauma that everyone went through, the people of color [and] the black people who were on that Equity Council aren’t even here at the institution anymore. When I came on board they were all traumatized,” Douglas responded.
Despite having a physically and socially disconnected campus, the labor Douglas has done with the Native Pathways Program has allowed her to continue the connection between our programs and campuses.
“I would say that the work that I’ve done with the Native Pathways Program has really been in support of the work that Glenda Breiler, Tina Kuckkahn-Miller, and Dawn Barron; the work that they lead on a daily basis with our Native Students. I work to help support the innovative work that they’re doing. We find ways to connect our work together and [they] support much of my work as well,” Douglas said.
Douglas has also done work to bridge Evergreen Tacoma campus and Evergreen Olympia campus throughout her endeavors. “We always find ways to include our Tacoma students. Sometimes they prefer live streaming or sometimes they prefer for us to send a van down to pick them up and we do that too. So I’ve enjoyed making sure they can make it to our campus,” Douglas said.
Throughout her time here in her position, Douglas pushed for various initiatives to make sure all student voices and historically underrepresented voices feel heard and protected on campus. One of the struggles that has been expressed by students was that after the various policies and initiatives implemented are adopted, they don’t actually affect every single person here.
“There will always be people who are resistant to treating people the way they deserve to be treated. Treating people with respect, and honoring who people are and how they prefer to be treated…We still have to keep moving forward, we can’t let that stop us,” Douglas shared.
The marginalized communities on our campus have always shown resilience. Evergreen gives access, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for growth. Our black students, staff and faculty have repeatedly received threats based on their skin color, gender and/or sexual orientation. Many of our black staff and faculty have left the school leaving marginalized students with less representation and at many times with significantly less institutional support.
“Institutions must change to better support people of color, to hire more people of color, to recruit more students of color and then come up with plans and real strategies for how we can retain them and help them to graduate and succeed within the institution,” Douglas said.
Black students and staff of color have had to reach out for community support instead of institutional support systems in this political climate. They’ve asked the institution to protect and support them as they have had to navigate a constantly changing support system.
“We cannot wait for these [institutional] changes to happen. While we’re trying to live and survive within these institutions we have to create ways that as communities of color we have to come together to support one another,” Douglas declared.
Douglas has started campus wide conversations around race and equity based on student success. In the spring of 2018 she gave us the first Inclusive Excellence seminars, featuring Dr. Damon Williams and went on to host two Summer Institutes. She worked to establish and implement the Inclusive Excellence Division, as well as the first Shining Star Awards in 2019, to acknowledge the staff and faculty leaders working to create an inclusive environment for students.
Not only has she worked to dismantle oppression and develop safe spaces at Evergreen, but also in the outer community. She has collaborated with the Senior Leadership team, Washington Center and Deanery. She also coordinated the first Juneteenth celebration in spring 2019 celebrating black history and elders.
Because of Douglas’ work each vice president as well as the president will develop an Inclusive Excellence action plan for each of their divisions. The first draft of these action plans will take place during winter quarter of this year. The institution should also make Douglas’ previous position permanent as a vice president and should have transparency, including student input for her replacement.
“I hope to pass the baton… maybe they have a new innovative approach that inspires different groups of people to keep moving and to keep making changes. My job was to do what I could in the time that I was here and now the next person will be even more energized, even more creative, even more of a relationship builder and they will do even better work,” Douglas reflected.
Chassity Holliman-Douglas has expanded our tunnel vision intention for student support services on campus: Student and Academic Support Services went from S.A.S.S. to I.E.S.S. Inclusive Excellence Student Support Services. She’s been adding color in spaces students used to avoid with student-led initiatives. Douglas, thank you for what you’ve left behind. The Evergreen Tacoma Program has a saying, “Sankofa, to go and fetch [as in to come back to the community and share knowledge and resources],” we hope you carry that with you. Hopefully student input will be used to decide the steps going forward, but in the meantime let’s call out, let’s call in, and let’s call on each other.
