Thursday, April 29, the College of William and Mary’s Student Assembly Reparations Committee held a virtual town hall to discuss their work over the past year. The committee co-chairs, Ifeoma Ayika ’22 and Victor Adejayan ’23, discussed survey data of diverse campus groups, community outreach and the path forward for the committee itself.
The idea for the Reparations Committee began in fall 2019, when Sen. Will Wasson J.D. ’21 brought up the idea of an SA committee that would understand and tackle racial inequality on the College’s campus. Following its incorporation into SA in spring 2020, the committee has changed from solely an SA venture to an SA-community hybrid, with two co-chairs, one from SA itself and one from the larger College community.
Co-chair of the Reparations Committee on the SA side, Ayika, pointed to the summer of 2020 and the killings of several unarmed Black Americans as a tipping point for the committee.
“After the murder of George Floyd, there was a lot of movement to make these conversations more in the foreground, more institutionalized within Student Assembly and on our campus, and we were also given a lot of spotlight,” Ayika said.
Following the resurgence of Black Lives Matter activism in the summer of 2020, SA created “The Plan to Tackle Systemic Racial Injustice at W&M,” a series of projects and committees aimed at identifying and remedying ongoing prejudice within the College. The plan emphasized the importance of the Reparations Committee, pushing the committee to the forefront of discussions of racial injustice.
“William and Mary honestly acts as a kind of microcosm for understanding these efforts on a national level,” Ayika said. “We are taking on the very daunting task of understanding what those harmful effects are, whose communities are affected and how we can remedy those within Student Assembly and the administration.”
Over the past year, the committee has conducted polls of diverse students on campus, conducted outreach efforts to the Williamsburg community and published a series of opinion pieces in The Flat Hat entitled “The Word on Reparations.” Above all, Ayika said, the committee has been building from the ground up — gathering resources and conducting outreach so the work can continue for future generations of students.
“We wanted to be an educational landmark when it came to this topic, so people knew who to come to and knew about the work we do,” Ayika said. “And we also wanted to make sure that we laid the groundwork — laid a solid foundation so that other co-chairs felt comfortable walking in those same footsteps and moving even farther than the previous people had done.”
“We wanted to be an educational landmark when it came to this topic, so people knew who to come to and knew about the work we do,” Ayika said. “And we also wanted to make sure that we laid the groundwork — laid a solid foundation so that other co-chairs felt comfortable walking in those same footsteps and moving even farther than the previous people had done.”
As part of their polling of the campus community, the Reparations Committee released a small-scale survey in February, aimed at understanding the campus climate for students from diverse backgrounds. The survey included 18 LGBTQ+ students, 48 multicultural students, 29 first generation students and 14 low-income students, of which 54 identified as more than one group. The survey asked the diverse students whether they felt respected by other students, faculty and staff, and whether they had ever felt discriminated against, among other questions.
Of the students surveyed, only 50% felt respected by their fellow students, with only 20.6% of multicultural students feeling respected. Adejayan, co-chair of the reparations committee on the community side, saw these results as disheartening.
“These are the people that our respondents are going to class with, staying in their residence hall with, working on projects together, the people they are interacting with most on an everyday basis,” Adejayan said. “Twenty point six percent of them feel like they’re respected. That means that about 80% of our multicultural respondents don’t feel respected by our fellow students.”
Faculty results were similar, with 58% of student respondents feeling respected by faculty, and only 34.4% of multicultural student respondents feeling respected by faculty.
“These are the people that these students basically came to this school for,” Adejayan said. “They came here for this education, and the people who are supposed to be educating them, they don’t feel respected by them.”
However, results for staff were very different. Seventy point two percent of the survey respondents felt respected by staff members, highlighting the differences in diversity between the student body and professors versus. the College’s staff.
“It’s notable because our staff here is arguably one of the most diverse groups of people on this campus, with a majority of our staff being Black,” Adejayan said. “And I can see why 70% of these respondents would feel like they are being respected the most by our staff. If anything, the staff is probably one of the most welcoming groups of people on this campus, as a multicultural student.”
“It’s notable because our staff here is arguably one of the most diverse groups of people on this campus, with a majority of our staff being Black,” Adejayan said. “And I can see why 70% of these respondents would feel like they are being respected the most by our staff. If anything, the staff is probably one of the most welcoming groups of people on this campus, as a multicultural student.”
Adejayan pointed to his own positive experience with staff members.
“I remember myself, coming from home to come to school my first year, the first people who really welcomed me at this school — even at my residence hall — were members of the janitorial staff, Black members of the janitorial staff,” Adejayan said. “They welcomed me, they were extremely excited to see me, they basically showed me around my entire dorm, gave me these useful tips on how to go about moving around this campus as a Black man. So I can see why these people are feeling like staff are respecting them the most.”
Beyond the question of respect, the survey also asked respondents if they regularly experienced discrimination. Sixty five percent of respondents reported yes, with 42% experiencing discrimination in the classroom, 23.3% while in Fraternity and Sorority Life, and 28.8% while walking around campus. For Adejayan, this once again underscored the severity of the problem.
“It’s not even just enough that these students aren’t feeling like they’re being respected on campus, as human beings, they’re also saying that, to a further extent, they’re feeling discriminated against, they’re being discriminated against on a regular basis,” Adejayan said. “And we’re seeing that, even with that discrimination, there is no safe space for these students. They’re being discriminated against in the classroom, in Greek life, walking around campus. There is no safe space on this campus for these students.”
Adejayan pointed to the survey results as proof of the pattern of discrimination that students of color face at the College. As the Reparations Committee moves forward, they plan to use the survey results to emphasize the importance of their work and the need for some form of reparations at the College. But for Adejayan, the work doesn’t solely rest with the committee — all students need to put in the work to make the College more inclusive to diverse communities.
“Yes, put pressure on administration, but that’s the easy part, right?” Adejayan said. “That’s where everybody goes. The harder part is now having those conversations with your friends, with yourself. What are you and your associates doing to add to these numbers? To take away from these numbers? What are you doing to constantly make this environment a better place for these diverse communities? Because now that we have this information out here, people can’t continue to just do nothing. Because doing such would make them complicit, make them an accomplice to this environment that constantly disrespects and discriminates against multicultural students and students of color on this campus.”