October 23rd, 2017 Fr. William Leahy Boston College Office of the President Botolph House Genrl 18 Old Colony Road Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 A Letter Discussing the Mistreatment of AHANA Students at Boston College Dear Father Leahy My name is Earl J. Edwards, and I am a 2010 alumnus of Boston College. During my time at BC, I was president of the AHANA Leadership Council, president of NAACP, president of Sigma Chapter of Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc. recipient of the Alfred Feliciano and Valerie Lewis Award, and voted Boston College’s Person of The Year by The Heights. Since graduation I have moved on to becoming an educator, getting my master’s degree from Columbia University, and I am currently pursuing my PhD in Education at University of California, Los Angeles. My roommates at BC ultimately became groomsmen at my wedding, my former mentors and professors are now dear, lifelong friends, and some of my former high school students and mentees are now BC students themselves. Needless to say, Boston College will always be a special place for me. However, as a Black man, the nostalgia that fills my heart when talking about BC is always coupled by feelings of resentment, disappointment, and most recently concern and outrage. I am writing this letter in response to the recent student protests at Boston College. While the media credits the defacing of “Black Lives Matter” signs as the impetus for the protest, you would be naïve to the believe this to be true. College campuses are microcosms of society, therefore without active, deliberate, and intentional work, the racism, discrimination, and injustice that plagues our world will naturally infuse campus walls as well. The frustration and alienation AHANA students (particularly Black students) feel at Boston College stem from a collective AHANA history of being systemically neglected by Boston College’s administration. Boston College has historically failed and continues to fail its students of color on campus, and must take full responsibility for the tensions that have aroused, as well as the work that it will take to truly make BC an inclusive institution. The racism that students of color experience at BC is not a collection of isolated incidents, but rather a direct result of Boston College’s systemic neglect of addressing White Supremacy. Below are my five grievances related to Boston College’s systemic neglect of AHANA students. Grievance 1: Boston College refuses to include racism as an important part of its Student Formation: “Boston College proposes an explicit and intentional approach to a broader vision of student formation, drawn from the understanding of what it means to be human that is at the heart of the Jesuit educational tradition.” Boston College, The Journey into Adulthood: Understanding Student Formation

Boston College prides itself on shaping its students into well rounded adults who are focused on being men and women for others; however, the institution does little to support students’ racial development. While the university developed the Center for Student Formation ten years ago to explicitly teach and mold BC students into adulthood, the center’s conceptual essay, does not address racism, white privilege, anti-blackness, or white supremacy in any meaningful way. The essay references race only two times and it lumps race into cultural attitudes comparable to sex, money, body image, or the use of alcohol (pg. 26). Boston College’s lack of informing white students about the dangers of whiteness allow racial acts of violence to occur perpetually. Boston College explicitly named its values and being aware racial inequities was not mentioned as one of them. The essay’s exclusion of racial development tells students that race is not significant and further marginalizes AHANA students racialized experiences. In 2010, I spoke with the Center for Student Formation’s director Jennie Purnell. I shared with her the violence that Black students were facing at BC as a result of racism and pushed for courses that address racism, however, my suggestions were not addressed in the center’s work. Grievance 2: Racial discrimination is a known and documented problem at Boston College that the senior administrators have neglected. Senior administrators at Boston College are well aware of the racism that occurs on its campus daily. In 2010, I published a research study focused on the Black Male Experience at BC. For my thesis, I surveyed about a third of all of the Black undergraduate male students at Boston College (67 students) and found that: • 79% of Black men have seen or heard of a racist act at Boston College. • 95% of Black men felt minor racial instances occur often at Boston College. • 43% of Black men felt they have been racially profiled by Boston College Police Officers while on campus.

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65% of Black men stated their non-Black friends used racial slurs or told racial jokes that made them feel uncomfortable? 67% of Black men felt they had to prove their intellect to Boston College professors.

In an effort to shed light on the experiences of an already vulnerable population, I personally presented my findings in meetings with Vice President of Student Affairs Patrick Rombalski among other senior level administrators. Additionally, I shared the above statistics with President William Leahy, Executive Vice President Patrick Keating, BCPD Chief Robert Morse, and Vice Provost Donald Hafner. I hoped the study would push Boston College to address racism structurally, but again senior administrators did not act. Grievance 3: Boston College refuses to require students to learn and critically analyze issues around race, class, gender, and sexuality. Boston College believes its students should be well-rounded academically and as a result, the university requires students to take core courses. When I was the president of the AHANA Leadership Council, I collaborated with the presidents of Organization of Latin American Affairs (OLAA), the Society of Native American People (SNAP), The Asian Caucus (AC), The United Front (UF), the Undergraduate Government (UGBC), Professor Shawn McGuffey, and Professor Deborah Piatelli to create a proposal for a mandatory course discussing race, class, gender, and

sexuality. In addition to creating a proposed outline for the course, we also designed an implementation plan for how the course could be rolled out as a pilot. I met with Vice Provost Donald Hafner for a semester to design the course. While Dr. Piatelli was able to make a course out of our discussions, Boston College never attempted an official pilot course and it never became a course requirement. Eight years later, BC students are still asking for a required course that addresses racism. Grievance 4: Boston College strategic plan does not address racism and as a result creates an unsafe place for AHANA students. “The University’s student body and workforce are substantially more diverse than a generation ago, yet challenges remain. Boston College will evaluate and strengthen efforts to support diverse communities on campus and to provide care and opportunity for all who study and work at the University.” Boston College’s Strategic Direction II. b

The aforementioned statement is the closest strand of Boston College’s strategic plan that explicitly mentions AHANA students. This plan assumes (1) just having more diversity leads to an inclusive environment and (2) the AHANA students are the only ones that need the support. White students are the perpetrators of the racial violence occurring against AHANA students— what interventions are they receiving? How is Boston College shaping its White student to stop them from making BC a hostile environment? Do not invest all your resources to help AHANA students cope with racial trauma, invest in proactively in stopping the racial trauma from occurring. The former director of the Office of AHANA Student Program Dr. Donald Brown has urged Boston College to create a strategic plan for diversity at BC and to hire a chief diversity officer that reports directly to Father Leahy. Even though he spent 30 years working directly with and for AHANA students at BC, his requests have landed on deaf ears. Grievance #5: Stop making AHANA students in charge of fixing Boston College’s racist climate. AHANA students have been charged with being students and unpaid administrators at Boston College for far too long. Boston College’s over-reliance on AHANA undergraduates goes back to the 1970’s when the Black Talent Program was responsible for admitting, advising, and educating their AHANA peers simply because the university wouldn’t. This administrator role persists today when AHANA students are responsible for creating programing to teach white student that AHANA descendants’ humanity matters. AHANA students spend countless hours trying to resolve problems that administrators get paid to address. Senior level administrators, need to do their jobs and resolve the racial issues occurring at Boston College. BC is taking away valuable time from AHANA undergraduates. Believe me, AHANA students did not go to college to protest, they are there to learn. If Boston College wants to show that Black Students Lives Matter, allow Black students to study peacefully by actively making an informed and inclusive environment. Sincerely, Earl J. Edwards, A&S 2010