Author: Anahid Yahjian
“I don’t see change in the air today,” ECLS professor Eric Newhall said to an audience of about 30 students on October 18. Newhall opened an ASOC-organized faculty discussion panel on Occidental’s mission statement. The panel also included DWA Professor Movindri Reddy, Critical Theory and Social Justice Professor G. Elmer Griffin and Education Department Chair Mary Christianakis.
Campus flyers invited students to “reenergize discussion and debate around the central tenets of the mission statement.”
The mission statement currently states, “The mission of Occidental College is to provide a gifted and diverse group of students with a total educational experience of the highest quality,” and is “anchored by four cornerstones: excellence, equity, community and service.”
According to Newhall, the “excellence” and “equity” portions of the mission were exemplified during John Slaughter’s presidency, and less emphasis was placed on the mission during Ted Mitchell’s presidency, when energies were directed towards bringing “financial health to the institution” after budget issues that occurred during the last of the Slaughter years.
Newhall suggested “bringing the mission to the next phase” by placing less emphasis on diversity and more on community. He concluded with a personal address to the students: “I challenge all of you to help play an active role.”
Newhall’s push for change was followed by Christianakis’s pillar-by-pillar analysis of the mission statement. She said that excellence and equity are “too dualistic to [keep] separate.” She also added, “We don’t know how to talk to one another,” referring to the community emphasis of the mission.
“We should all be allying around our mission,” Christianakis said as she opened the floor for Reddy, who made connections to the school’s transformation by sharing her experiences as a South African native.
Griffin shared his take on Oxy’s mission. “It seems to me to be full of truisms and clichés,” he said. He added that it is “lengthy and tedious” in comparison with that of schools like Bob Jones University, a Christian college located in South Carolina whose mission statement is one sentence long and states “Within the cultural and academic soil of liberal arts education, Bob Jones University exists to grow Christlike character that is Scripturally disciplined; others-serving; God-loving; Christ-proclaiming; and focused Above.”
Griffin said he sensed “a certain kind of anxiety” in Oxy’s mission, calling it an “anxious response to the cultural and political times in which the authors found themselves; [there was] anxiety about survival, insignificance.” He said that incorporating “more active language than passive” was a first step towards improvement.
During the discussion portion of the event Devon Puglia (senior) raised the topic of “diversity of thought” in the classroom, saying he felt it is almost completely absent.
“Diversity simultaneously embraces and defaces the mission statement,” Griffin said. “We are moving forward. Don’t go backward under the umbrella of diversity.”
Christianakis addressed the question of funding desired programs. “We have significant faculty expertise that has not been used,” she said. She also questioned the school’s commitment to nurturing the areas of diversity and multiculturalism. “Last year, we could have hired a queer theorist [. . . ] we didn’t,” she said.
Max Read (senior) brought up the question of “align[ing] students and faculty,” citing his personal difficulties with having his voice heard regarding first-year housing.
Newhall said there is “power in numbers,” while Griffin described some students’ attempts at having their voices heard as “a lot of complaining.”
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