On Monday, the fourth and final candidate for director of the Third World Center gave a presentation at the Sharpe Refectory. As evidenced by the fact that each candidate gave a presentation, the search process for the new director is placing a high priority on student input.
The search committee includes three undergraduates, a graduate student, an alum, faculty members and several administrators and is aided by a student advisory board composed solely of undergraduates. So far, the committee has hosted welcome receptions for all four of the top candidates for the position, and each candidate has given a presentation.
The receptions and presentations — opportunities to meet the candidates in person — are completed, but students can still voice their opinions on each of the candidates. The search committee has made the candidates' application materials available in the TWC. Any student can go to the center to look them over or contact Ricky Gresh, senior director for student engagement and the search committee's chair, for electronic versions.
We find this approach especially appropriate for a center whose creation was the result of students acting to change the world they lived in. We also believe that student input is a fundamental consideration in making other University decisions as well, whether it's the return of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps or the design for an expensive new building.
All of those decisions, the choice of the center's new director included, have a tremendous impact on student life. The center's new head will be responsible for the Minority Peer Counselors who are in every first-year unit, for the Third World Transition Program, which hundreds of incoming first-years attend, and for weeks of programming throughout the academic year. The director will interact daily with undergraduate students. Beyond that, he or she will head a center that is part of a larger University community — and provokes heated debate in the general Brown community. The center's programs and activities are a polarizing topic on campus, and even its name, which is intended to evoke principles of self-determination and solidarity among marginalized groups, often causes new students or visiting prospective students to scratch their heads in confusion.
The center grew out of frustration on the part of students of color who felt they were not part of the University and who lacked a space to discuss and organize around issues of race and ethnicity that were fundamental to their day-to-day lives. We believe the continued existence of a safe space for students of color is vital to the center's identity, history and mission.
But we also believe that institutions are not static and that creating a safe space for students of color should not limit conversations about racial, socioeconomic or gender inequalities to that space only. We hope the center's next director recognizes the importance of balancing these two concerns. We believe that other students should respect the exclusivity of a safe space for students of color and that the Third World Center should not hold itself apart from the rest of campus — and we hope the new director recognizes that the former goes hand-in-hand with the latter.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
