UNIVERSITY STATEMENT ON TWTP (7/2/08)
Recently some questions were raised about the status of TWTP. We are writing to affirm the university’s commitment to the mission and aims of TWTP. It may be useful to share some information on recent processes and reviews related to this program.
The 2003 Supreme Court decisions on the University of Michigan cases lead many universities to revisit some of their diversity programs. Two things in particular were relevant to the review of TWTP. One, the decision suggested that diversity programs needed to be reviewed periodically to assess whether goals continue to be relevant and second, there was a concern about whether diversity programs excluded the participation of some people based upon race.
In 2003-2004 we commissioned an outside evaluation of the TWTP program. The project included survey data of present and past participants as well as surveys of individuals who have never participated. Focus groups and interviews were also conducted. A major finding of the review was that participants felt that TWTP had prepared them to become fully involved in the larger academic and social experiences at Brown. They felt the program empowered them to feel comfortable with who they are and helped them to understand how important it was for them to offer their perspectives in every area of the University. This outcome is consistent with all of the literature on how to gain the benefits of diversity on campuses suggesting that TWTP continues to be relevant to the university’s diversity goals. Recommendations for improvements in the program were also offered.
We then examined how participants are notified about the program. Some changes were made to insure that every incoming student receives one notice about all pre-orientation programs. In addition, all pre-orientation programs can do specific recruiting. Students make their choices based upon how interested they are in the goals of a particular program. The goal of TWTP remains to focus on providing participants with an understanding of the challenges students of color face when entering a predominately white environment and the help develop approaches to negotiating such environments. Students of color are still among the majority of those who choose to register for TWTP. A few white students have chosen to register in the last few years. Only one or two have actually come to participate.
Funding for TWTP is reviewed each year like every other program at Brown. In recent years, additional funds have been added to the budget of TWTP in order to keep pace with the growing costs of running the program. TWTP is a major program on the Campaign Table of Needs and is in fact one of the programs targeted in the Alumni of Color Campaign Initiative.
Karen McLaurin-Chesson,
Associate Dean and Director, Third World Center
Brenda Allen,
Associate Provost and Director of Institutional Diversity
Margaret Klawunn,
Vice President for Campus Life
Official University Response About TWTP
Rebuttal To Don't Water Down TWTP by Bernicestine McLeod Bailey and Harold Bailey
The opinion listed as fact here under “Hot Topics” and on at least one TW listserv has reached many people very quickly and caused a great deal of concern for many alumni. Our reaction as Vice Chairs of the AOC Initiative which is raising money to institutionalize TWTP for the ages was to immediately go to the source to find out if what was purported had any validity. According to Dean K who has run the program for over 20 years and was one of its early success stories as a student, the positions stated are almost wholly incorrect. She will issue an official statement on this shortly. However, in the meantime, we would like to let you know the following:
Fact: The TWTP budget has not been cut.
Fact: The Excellence at Brown program is not subsuming TWTP. It is a complementary,much-needed program to improve the writing skills of entering freshmen.
Fact: The TWTP is open to any entering student, but this is not a bad thing and has in no way disrupted the effectiveness of the program..
Fact: The AOC Initiative is the way to endow TWTP and other institutions at Brown for posterity. However, it is our understanding that a number of potential donors are already withholding money from this effort because of the opinion that has been posted on this website.
Please take these facts into consideration and remember that today (June 30) is your last chance to help us all make our initial statement for TWTP’s importance via the AOC Initiative. If you have not already done so, we urge you to make your statement via your gift today.
Bernicestine McLeod Bailey ‘68
Harold Bailey, Jr. ‘70
Fact: The TWTP budget has not been cut.
Fact: The Excellence at Brown program is not subsuming TWTP. It is a complementary,much-needed program to improve the writing skills of entering freshmen.
Fact: The TWTP is open to any entering student, but this is not a bad thing and has in no way disrupted the effectiveness of the program..
Fact: The AOC Initiative is the way to endow TWTP and other institutions at Brown for posterity. However, it is our understanding that a number of potential donors are already withholding money from this effort because of the opinion that has been posted on this website.
Please take these facts into consideration and remember that today (June 30) is your last chance to help us all make our initial statement for TWTP’s importance via the AOC Initiative. If you have not already done so, we urge you to make your statement via your gift today.
Bernicestine McLeod Bailey ‘68
Harold Bailey, Jr. ‘70
Don't Water Down TWTP By Makini Chisholm-Straker
I am writing as a concerned alum, expecting that given the Alumni of Color Initiative, there is a great deal of support for TWTP. The program is in financial trouble, but this is not news. What is new is that the program is now, in addition to inappropriately being open to white students, merged with another program. This threatens the integrity and purpose of the program; anyone who has attended and/or understood TWTP would be able to attest to that.
This new program, "Excellence at Brown" is taking over TWTP:
"Excellence at Brown" takes place during TWTP; TWTP has very little funding at this point and cannot afford food, so participants and shirts eat in the VDub, with the "Excellence" program participants; the multicultural dinner that used to be ours is now theirs; the welcome from Ruth Simmons to the families of the incoming first years is now combined with the excellence program; ISM WORKSHOPS ARE WITH THIS PROGRAM'S PARTICIPANTS. What is left of TWTP, you ask? As it stands, only a name.
TWTP is not just about students of color at brown. It is about people of color carving out a place for ourselves in a nation and a world that wants us to fail, that has oppressed us and continues to do so. TWTP was training for us to practice at Brown and in local surrounding Rhode Island the social justice love and action that we were to implement in the world. TWTP was to equip us with the basic tools with which to build a better "habitat for humanity." TWTP is not a feel good program. It was hard. It hurt. Done well, it asks us to momentarily navel-gaze and then get up, get up and do something. It helped us get ready, defining ourselves, our community so that we could build a larger community, committed to peace, love and justice. There is still a great deal of work to be done and we need more soldiers of loving justice. TWTP is "bootcamp" for just such soldiers.
There was a "Whiteness Awareness Week," one of the years I was an undergraduate student; this program was, as TWTP was originally, run by students who correctly saw a need. Communities need such spaces to build themselves, before coming together. We are more cohesive and able to work toward equity when we understand and love ourselves and have a language with which to talk with each other. Something like a BUAD (Building Understanding Across Differences), after TWTP and a "Whiteness Awareness Week," would be valuable. But NEVER at the expense of TWTP, as it ought to be.
Alumni of color and our allies need to support what we have fought for and support the current students who are still fighting. Already there is an endowment in the works:
"The Alumni of Color Initiative itself is unique in Brown's history, as it is the first time that the alumni of color community has reviewed the University's fundraising priorities and identified those that they would like to come together to support in substantial ways. Working together, this community has targeted several areas which, when strengthened, will help ensure that Brown's history of recognizing and encouraging diversity will not only continue, but flourish in new and bold ways. Funds raised will benefit Brown's students and faculty by providing immediate support through the Brown Annual Fund and creating endowments to provide funding in perpetuity for scholarship aid for students of color, the Third World Transition Program, and academic research in Africana Studies and U.S. Latino Studies....President Simmons....told the audience that Brown needs you, the students need you, and the faculty need you. She concluded that the only way to stand for something that matters is for everyone to stand together."
But supporting the endowment is not sufficient for this year, for this summer's TWTP. This year's TWTP needs salvaging now. The students need our support now. We must go to our respective alumni organizations and share the sad tidings: Tell BULAC, tell A4, tell IPC, tell NAB alum that what they have fought for, what we have fought for is being stripped bare. If alumni fund TWTP and also communicate our unity supporting and commitment to TWTP to Ruth Simmons, the University must recognize our strength and the value that we, the donors, place on the program.
In solidarity,
Makini Chisolm-Straker, '05 MD '09
MPC '02 - '03
MPC Friend '03 - '06/continued
Leave your comment about this article.
This new program, "Excellence at Brown" is taking over TWTP:
"Excellence at Brown" takes place during TWTP; TWTP has very little funding at this point and cannot afford food, so participants and shirts eat in the VDub, with the "Excellence" program participants; the multicultural dinner that used to be ours is now theirs; the welcome from Ruth Simmons to the families of the incoming first years is now combined with the excellence program; ISM WORKSHOPS ARE WITH THIS PROGRAM'S PARTICIPANTS. What is left of TWTP, you ask? As it stands, only a name.
TWTP is not just about students of color at brown. It is about people of color carving out a place for ourselves in a nation and a world that wants us to fail, that has oppressed us and continues to do so. TWTP was training for us to practice at Brown and in local surrounding Rhode Island the social justice love and action that we were to implement in the world. TWTP was to equip us with the basic tools with which to build a better "habitat for humanity." TWTP is not a feel good program. It was hard. It hurt. Done well, it asks us to momentarily navel-gaze and then get up, get up and do something. It helped us get ready, defining ourselves, our community so that we could build a larger community, committed to peace, love and justice. There is still a great deal of work to be done and we need more soldiers of loving justice. TWTP is "bootcamp" for just such soldiers.
There was a "Whiteness Awareness Week," one of the years I was an undergraduate student; this program was, as TWTP was originally, run by students who correctly saw a need. Communities need such spaces to build themselves, before coming together. We are more cohesive and able to work toward equity when we understand and love ourselves and have a language with which to talk with each other. Something like a BUAD (Building Understanding Across Differences), after TWTP and a "Whiteness Awareness Week," would be valuable. But NEVER at the expense of TWTP, as it ought to be.
Alumni of color and our allies need to support what we have fought for and support the current students who are still fighting. Already there is an endowment in the works:
"The Alumni of Color Initiative itself is unique in Brown's history, as it is the first time that the alumni of color community has reviewed the University's fundraising priorities and identified those that they would like to come together to support in substantial ways. Working together, this community has targeted several areas which, when strengthened, will help ensure that Brown's history of recognizing and encouraging diversity will not only continue, but flourish in new and bold ways. Funds raised will benefit Brown's students and faculty by providing immediate support through the Brown Annual Fund and creating endowments to provide funding in perpetuity for scholarship aid for students of color, the Third World Transition Program, and academic research in Africana Studies and U.S. Latino Studies....President Simmons....told the audience that Brown needs you, the students need you, and the faculty need you. She concluded that the only way to stand for something that matters is for everyone to stand together."
But supporting the endowment is not sufficient for this year, for this summer's TWTP. This year's TWTP needs salvaging now. The students need our support now. We must go to our respective alumni organizations and share the sad tidings: Tell BULAC, tell A4, tell IPC, tell NAB alum that what they have fought for, what we have fought for is being stripped bare. If alumni fund TWTP and also communicate our unity supporting and commitment to TWTP to Ruth Simmons, the University must recognize our strength and the value that we, the donors, place on the program.
In solidarity,
Makini Chisolm-Straker, '05 MD '09
MPC '02 - '03
MPC Friend '03 - '06/continued
Leave your comment about this article.