Franly Ulerio
Call out NTID/RIT Part 2 of 2
Institutional Racism, a kind of systemic violence, in the College of Transcript: Everyone congratulated them and I hoped that their awards would show that their positions are so important to keep. Nope. They shut down the position. The administrative team did not care. They don’t care about diversity and inclusion in SLT.
They closed the assistant director position first. Here is the story behind this. The assistant director used to be the advisor for the Ebony Club (EC), a fully Black Deaf organization/club. EC wrote up 6 demands and sent it to the administration. The EC advisor, a white man, joined them to give them perspectives and act as a sounding board for ideas. The Ebony Club executive board was the one who wrote the demands and worked on clarifying the language. The advisor just worked to support that. For some reason, the administrative team found out that that person was the EC advisor and closed that position as a retaliation, not hiring that person again. That completely threw me and students off. We were extremely upset that they closed the position. We needed that position! That position is critically needed, their services and responsibilities are needed. When they cut that off, it threw off so much. To be clear, I know that the administration said they closed it because of financial issues, which is not true. NSC at that time was led by white LGBTQIA students. Those NSC leaders had a dialogue with the administration and made it clear that money is not the issue here. They lied when they blamed it on financial issues. Its not true, simple as that. SLT was struggling with money and understaffs, and they know they need to expand, period. That is when the 2-year position was opened, as a way to pat our heads and hands, to shut us up. Did they plan to keep that position after two years? Not at all.
So now, both positions are closed. The system became unstable and unhealthy. After the two year position was closed, they reopened the assistant director position and hired a white person with a PhD. He had no knowledge of community-based leadership. They took that position and shut the wall between them and the community. Many students objected and put in complaints. I don’t need to expand on it further, it is done. We are not satisfied with the current assistant director. Who is their supervisor? NTID administrators, especially VP of Student Affairs and Academic Services. That woman, white woman, allowed that kind of behavior to happen. We’ve already seen clear examples of racism. Any support is quickly cut off and diminished. They control our lives, our voices, our movement, our beliefs. They are aggressively controlling.
Now I will move on to another topic. I will talk about my current experiences. When I was president, my NSC VP was a white man. He had an idea to change community structures, and the idea was to label groups. For example, ALANA means race, such as Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, Black people, etc. He wanted to lump them all together and give them one vote. Before they could vote as individual organizations, getting one vote each. He wanted to change that. I stepped in and did not permit that to happen. I knew it would cause many problems and reduce accessibility and would increase miscommunication. I have seen racist systems pit together groups to cause more problems. When I said no to this idea, it became more hostile for me. It got to the point where I did not feel safe. He had to leave. We had to heal and fix this mess. Thats why the community meetings name is NTID Student Congress Assembly (NSCA) was not entirely supported by both of NTID community members and club representatives. There was a lot of missing information. A lot of ownership problems and ego mentality. How did this come up? It goes back to the administrative team, the same three administrators I mentioned before. They loved the idea and the VP of Student and Academic Service, white woman, fully supported it. She went to Student Government calling to change the structure of my community meetings. Does SG know about my community? Absolutely nothing. SG, NSC VP, and the VP of Student and Academic Service had that dialogue without me. I told NSC VP that I said no to this idea. He decided not to tell SG that I said no. They went on without me. When I arrived to the meeting, my NSC VP was not there and when I told them that I said no to this idea, they were shocked and disappointed. It was a huge mess, very bad. The NSCA name was wrong, it used to be called NSA, NTID Student Assembly. This was originally set up by the community, with no influence from the administration, and no influence from SG. The NTID Deaf community decided on this. In this situation, it was not the same. It was not fair. They wanted to show that community meetings are owned and are operated under NSC. It is impossible for them to be structured like that. They must share authority, communicate with each other equally. One cannot control the other. They are like a life force, a breathing living thing, that must share and live together, period.
The same concept applies to the Student Life Team department. SLT cannot overtake NSC, and NSC cannot dictate and punish SLT. Both departments must work together. Why? Both of them share resources. Once both have built a stronger relationship, it will become more healthy. Then they can succeed together. If the SLT department is ineffective, then NSC will be struggling. Is that clear?
So back to that situation, when the administrators found out- I will back up. As NSC president, working my VP, we can often talk with the VP of Student and Academic Service alone or with other people on either side. When my NSC VP left, I remain stand with my voice and beliefs. I knew I wouldn’t back down, I would keep going. After the administrators found out about that, VP of Student and Academic Service never met with me alone. She always had more than two people to meet with me in the room. Occasionally I would bring in NTID Senator and NSC director of Academic Affairs. But most of the time I would butt heads with the HR lawyer person. Keep in mind, I was only 24 years old and a college student. They treated me as if I was a lawyer myself. That’s how I feel battling with them. It was an ongoing hostility for me. That interaction was no good. It got to a point where enough was enough. I was done. The only witnesses of this were NSC advisors, the director of diversity and inclusion saw this happening too. The director of diversity and inclusion are not here too. They already saw this. It is very concerning and very frightening. That is why the current SLT team is not healthy and not stable. Why? They are choked. They cannot breathe. They cannot get support from the administrators because they are against each other. That is institutional racism. That impacts students of color the most. Back then, the population was majority white, but now it is changing to be more diverse and healthier. But the admin wants to spite that and suppress it. Hiring clueless people, closing positions, weakens SLT’s ability to support all students’ needs. The SLT team already knows they need more staff, but they are controlled by the administrative team. It is hostile for SLT too. That is my perspective.