The first time I went to a Diversity and Inclusion (DNI) meeting was 2021, my Sophomore year of college. I was new to campus culture and interested in getting involved. I found pretty quickly that the space was anything but inclusive. Nearly everyone there was a senior and it felt like there was an unspoken rule that you had to know someone to even show up. All the committee members didn’t talk and left as soon as the meeting was over, and the a-board members only seemed interested in talking to each other. The event was open to the public on DuckLink but there seemed to be an unspoken “invite only” rule. Back then, DNI wasn’t a committee, it was a strange, exclusive society. I left the meeting feeling discouraged and I didn’t approach DNI at Stevens for a long time after that. A year later, all of those seniors graduated and the DNI committee functionally didn’t exist. No meetings were being held, only a handful of people were aware that it existed, and no progress was being made on any initiatives.
DNI at Stevens has a bit of a difficult history. When I first joined the SGA at the end of my Junior year, I was warned not to get too involved with Diversity and Inclusion. People brought up stories about toxic membership and general public controversy. It seems like when it comes to identity, nothing the committee did was ever good. It was the only committee of the SGA that could both do too much and not enough at the same time. It’s hard being held to that standard and I think that’s a part of the reason it fell apart.
Still, I think it’s important for a student government to have a committee that handles issues around identity and accessibility. So, when I noticed the state of DNI last year, I decided to start speaking up in Senate meetings to revive the committee. Eventually, it worked. It wasn’t all me, there are a lot of other people who can take credit for bringing back the committee and who have put in a lot more effort than I did. I’m grateful that so many people agreed that this committee was worth building back up.
The committee is now called the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Accessibility Committee (DEIBA) and looks entirely different than it did two years ago. As it stands, I am the longest serving active member of DEIBA. That isn’t saying much considering we spent a whole year only talking about potential meeting times without ever actually meeting. The committee was dead for so long, it was like we were starting it from scratch. If any former members wanted things to be done a certain way, they didn’t leave any instructions behind.
One issue that DEIBA took on this year was the state of the Gateway North boycott. I personally didn’t hear about the boycott until my sophomore year, since no upperclassmen were on campus my freshman year. Even then, in 2021, a lot of the passion and drive for change was gone from the movement. Unless you were a student leader or a part of certain affected communities, there was very little chance that you had heard about the boycott, let alone greg gianforte. Most students were oblivious or apathetic to the cause. My Junior year, I began writing for The Stute and found myself covering greg gianforte’s politics. Through those articles, I was exposed to Gateway North’s history.
Around that time me and some queer friends came up with the idea to change or potentially end the boycott. We noticed how many people didn’t understand what was happening and didn’t care to learn. There were no yearly traditions to remind the student body about the history and not enough people read The Stute or stopped to read infographics to effectively spread the word. I thought it would be great to have a physical reminder that people couldn’t help but stop, look at, and ask questions about. What better place than Gateway North itself?
When DEIBA was looking for initiatives this year, I brought up the idea of changing the boycott. It wasn’t the administration or Lilianna Delman who came up with the idea. It was me. We met with student leaders to get opinions and tried to spread the word in the months leading up to Pride Week. For most of this year, students were unsure about the plan (it was definitely ambitious) but everyone we talked to was onboard to give it a shot. Through it all, my stance, and DEIBA’s stance, has been that we don’t want to do anything that the student body doesn’t support; we told everyone that we would roll back the plan if enough people wanted us to.
While we had student support, we got a lot done. We secured funding to install queer art around Gateway North. We had plans for a permanent plaque in the main area. We also had plenty of ideas for future projects like changing the display case on the first floor, holding queer sex education workshops, and basically anything that greg gianforte would hate to happen in “his” building.
Recently, students (including many that we had already talked to prior to Pride Week) made it clear that they want to hold onto the boycott. There were many untrue things published and shared around. I’m not sure where most of it came from, but I think DEIBA is partially at fault for not getting ahead of things before they got out of control. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what happened, it matters more where we go from here. The students clearly want the boycott, but the issues I talked about are still relevant. So how do we deal with that?
Here’s my honest opinion: the boycott means nothing. It did a lot at the start of the gianforte issue, and I agree that it was the right move to make in 2020, but it has faded. I think current students are clinging to the boycott because it is easy. It’s easier to do nothing than to actually hold a meaningful protest. Our lack of action these past few years has done nothing to impact greg gianforte and it never will. No one who matters (greg gianforte, the Board of Trustees, or President Farvardin) gives two shits if we don’t want to hold club meetings in a building. We can’t touch those people through inaction. Boycotts are meant to cause change through financial, social, or political pressure, but there is no financial, social, or political impact of clubs not using Gateway North. It is, by definition, performative.
I am sick and tired of the idea that this is the best we can do. The community at this school is creative and smart. I know we are capable of changing and adapting this movement to continue the progress of our alumni. I’m graduating soon, so I won’t be able to see this conflict to the end, but I’m begging the underclassmen who read this: don’t let the spirit of this protest die. DEIBA is a crucially important tool to advocate for vulnerable groups of students. It has given me a voice with administration and it can give you one too. Keep fighting for Gateway North. We might not be able to change the name of the building, but that doesn’t mean we’re at a dead end.
Do you think the boycott works? Then prove me wrong, please! I would love to be proven wrong on this! I truly don’t care how, but things need to change. The student body needs to keep remembering what has been done and continue fighting for more. It’s easy to start a movement when the wound is fresh and emotions are high, but how do you keep a movement going when no one cares anymore? Boycott or no boycott, I plan on supporting future students’ efforts as an alumni, and I hope that other alumni reading this will do the same.
