The second Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center conversation took place on Monday at SDRP, providing further budget information and answering any lingering student questions from the previous meeting.
“When we started this last week we thought we had a singular conversation,” said Domonic Cobb, Acting Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Success, Inclusion and Belonging. “Then it became clear that there were many follow-up conversations that need to be had.”
Cobb stressed the importance of efficiency and mutual respect from the students in attendance while promising transparency from student affairs leadership.
“Usually when we have conversations in the community, we want to have at least an opportunity to share with each other some mutual kind of expectations for how we engage each other,” Cobb said.
Following Cobb, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Danita Brown Young addressed the Dear Colleague Letter, which was released by the U.S. Department of Education for Civil Rights on Feb. 14.
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The letter targets race-based programs and DEI initiatives, stating that such admissions and program decisions are unlawful and must be eliminated.
Despite this, Young said business at BNAACC will move forward as usual.
“All of our programs, our services in our facilities, are open to every person,” Young said. “At this time anything can change, a directive may come where we may have to make some adjustments, but we are very comfortable with moving forward because all of our programs and services are welcoming and open to any person who is a student here on this campus.”
Young assured the students in attendance that any changes would be communicated to the campus.
With the main topic of the night being the budget, the rest of the conversation was geared toward helping students understand the school’s funds concerning BNAACC.
Student affairs leadership shared charts, graphs and spreadsheets detailing state and tuition totals, self-reporting venues and student cultural programming fee allocation.
The discussion also focused on The Circuit: Pre-Orientation Program, expanding on the topic that was discussed during the first conversation. Cobb reiterated that the program was being funded on grant money — which has now run out.
“We were able to get significant funds from the grants we were talking about, which allowed us to expand the number of students we served, allowed us to expand the program pretty significantly,” Cobb said.
Reynaldo Camas, sophomore in LAS, questioned the strategic plan of the grant and why it was only able to last two years.
“If you all knew that this grant was going to run out eventually, what did you do to make sure that this grant lasted a couple more years?” Camas said.
According to Jim Hintz, Acting Associate Vice Chancellor for Auxiliary, Health & Wellbeing, student affairs leadership had hoped they’d be able to find additional funding within the two years before the grant ran out, and that the campus would be “further along.”
“Frankly I thought we had two years to figure out a plan,” Hintz said. “We took a gamble … but now we’re in a point where we have to figure it out … it was a bit of a risk certainly, but at the same time it allowed us to do things we couldn’t have done.”
Despite extra clarification on the lost grant and depleted funds, students still questioned the allocation and justification of costs.
Sydney Spotts, junior in Media, said that the cost didn’t align with her experiences with the Circuit Program.
“I understand the cost of different things,” Spotts said. “But in my experience it was all guest speakers and we took all public transit. So I’m just a little bit confused on (how) the funds for that would add up to such a huge number.”
According to Cobb, the dramatic increase in funds was due to cost escalation, inflation and paying BNAACCS’s staff, explaining they wanted to pay students in these programs the same as those in other orientation programs
Cobb ended the conversation at 8:30 p.m., urging students and Student Affairs leadership to work together.
“I think that we will hopefully all come together with some solutions that help move us forward,” Cobb said. “I think in many ways our objectives are aligned.”
