About 30 people attended a second College of Arts and Sciences forum Thursday afternoon, organized eight days after videos surfaced of a Theta Tau-sponsored event Chancellor Kent Syverud called “extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities.”

The majority of attendees were faculty, staff and graduate or post-graduate students. Gwendolyn Pough, a professor in the women’s and gender studies department, said she believed there was limited student attendance at the forum because students told her they found the town halls useless.

College of Arts and Sciences Dean Karin Ruhlandt spoke at the meeting via video chat from Germany. She held a forum with SU Abroad students earlier in the day in Strasbourg, France.

“I believe we need to really make this happen is an institutional transformation,” Ruhlandt said, referring to changing SU’s campus culture. “And this is something which requires a long-term commitment to what is happening.”

Michele Wheatly, SU’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said that as a tenured professor of the College of Arts and Sciences, she wanted to be in attendance at Thursday’s forum. She and other faculty said they weren’t surprised by the Theta Tau videos.

“I think the administration hasn’t been any more surprised by this event than anybody else who is living in America right now,” Wheatly said.

Paul Schlesinger | Staff Photographer

Wheatly expressed concern for the treatment of faculty of color, especially how they are integrated into the faculty once they’re hired. She said some have been placed in “toxic environments.”

Ruhlandt said the college is planning to introduce mandatory diversity classes. Every student in the College of Arts and Sciences would be enrolled in one of several selected courses tackling diversity issues, Ruhlandt said. The dean said she hopes these efforts will be replicated across other schools and colleges at SU.

Gerald Greenberg, the college’s senior associate dean for academic affairs, said in an interview after the forum that he received an email about a university-wide restructuring of SU’s first-year forum prior to Thursday’s town hall. Syverud announced plans to restructure the first-year forum after Theta Tau’s initial suspension last Wednesday. Greenberg said he believed the new forum would be implemented in fall 2018.

“That is unclear to me how that’s going to roll out and how that’s going to impact the first-year forum that we have had for several years,” Greenberg said. “It’s clear something is going to happen, it’s just not clear how.”

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MORE COVERAGE:

• Second Theta Tau video shows mimed sexual assault of person with disabilities
• SU will not publicly release names of students in Theta Tau investigation
• Complaints filed against 18 people present at Theta Tau event
• Multicultural Greek organizations find inspiration for activism in Theta Tau videos

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Published on April 26, 2018 at 9:03 pm

Contact Josh: jlschafe@syr.edu | @Schafer_44