Changes in the Works for Multicultural Affairs

Three months after the end of a hunger strike that demanded an increase in Office of Multicultural Affairs’ allotted resources, the office is undergoing an expansion which many say can’t come too soon.

Involved students are watching the changes closely as the OMA experiences physical expansion, faculty hiring, and the addition of new residential communities.

In the coming months, an announcement is expected of the site where OMA’s future Intercultural Resource Center will be located. “Just in informal conversation, I’ve heard that the announcement will happen near the end of the semester,” said Sam Rennebohm, GS and a campus activist.

According to Samantha Stanton, CC ’09 and political chair of the Student Organization of Latinos, the IRC, which is currently housed in a brownstone at 552 114th St., will also expand next door to occupy 554.

Although a blog post during the November hunger strike detailing the negotiation results claimed that IRC expansion would be “announced and funded at the end of the semester,” students do not cite the delay as a lack of administrative follow-through.

“I think that part of the negotiations was something that’s been in discussion for a long time,” Rennebohm, a strike negotiator, said, adding that the hunger strike negotiations were just a convenient opportunity to discuss them.

“I think there’s a kind of understanding between the administration and students that it’s moving forward, although never as quickly as we’d like,” he said.

Plans for the expansion of the OMA’s main office, currently located on the fourth floor of Lerner, are more nebulous. “I think there are a lot of discussions about how to best reorganize the office space in Lerner,” Rennebohm said, “and the OMA will definitely be a part of that discussion.”

“As with most things in this university,” Tiffany Dockery, Black Students Organization president and CC ’09, said, “it’s kind of shrouded in mystery.”

Others also expressed frustration with the way information on about the process is being distributed. “I think we’re out of the loop,” Stanton said. “Everything is filtered from housing through the OMA to us.”

The OMA is also currently undergoing an outside review intended to assess its function and needs—another term of the hunger strike settlement. According to Assistant Dean of Multicultural Affairs Melinda Aquino, the review is headed by Saletta Boni, Ph.M. ’86 and Ph.D. ’88, who is a senior consultant at the Columbia-affiliated Leadership Consulting Associates. Rennebohn said the review should be completed “within the next few months.”

“Hopefully,” Dockery said, “the consulting firm will state some of the problems with space and understaffing that students have been noting for a long time.”

“A lot of people working in the OMA are overstretched,” Stanton added, echoing an almost-universal sentiment. “I think they need more people in there.”

The office is in fact currently trying to fill the position vacated by former Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs Kecia Brown, who left in January.

“The email I got said it was to focus on her education and health,” Dockery said of Brown’s departure, which Dockery linked to the office’s workload. “It showed the problems with the OMA right now—why should a woman’s work interfere with her education and her health?”

Other OMA expansion projects include the addition of Q House, a residential community that the OMA’s Web site says will be “dedicated to providing a safe living environment for LGBTQ students.” Christina Chen, CC ’09 senior advisor to the Asian American Association, said the unit, the location of which is not yet fixed, will house 10 to 15.

According to Dean of Student Affairs Eleanor Daugherty, the department and its members are unable to comment on the OMA’s expansion while the application process for Q House is ongoing.

The OMA’s Ethnic Studies Suite, which the same site says is based in ideas of “multiculturalism and social justice”, is also new this year. Currently located on the seventh floor of Broadway, it is perhaps inaptly named. “It’s like a cluster of rooms at the end of a corridor,” Stanton said. Its nine current residents hope to move to a more communal space next year.