Over the last few years, Fisher has been very open about their craving for diversity. This effort was fueled by the need to be more inclusive than it was when it first opened. I applaud this initiative with full force as we need the reconstruction of spaces like this to be for everyone; we cannot just stand with their original values. It is okay for people, places, and things to change, and Fisher has done amazing in that sense. Well, amazing feels like a stretch, maybe a little too big of a praise. They have done a good job, but we can always do better. In this segment of “Where is the Color?” I want to highlight the lack of faculty that fits what Fisher searches for in their students: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that we lack professors of color in our classrooms, whether they be visiting professors or ones who have been here for years. It takes one student of color to realize what is missing. Whispers in the hall let us know that during COVID’s peak, we had around 13 faculty lined up for hiring, faculty of color at that, but currently we have three of those 13. I have thousands of unanswered questions: Where are they? What happened? And why? Why don’t we have more faculty of color?
You probably can’t expect to retain the diversity you want if you don’t have people that students can look up to and bond with, right? As Fisher’s diversity in the student population grows, we would expect that we will see the same with the faculty most of us will spend our four years with. However, it seems that even new hires are missing out on the stories and bonds we students of color crave. We always talk about finding your people, people who can uplift you and understand you for who you are. But, when the people helping us make our future don’t look like us, it is hard to picture a future. The most diverse class at Fisher doesn’t have the understanding support from a person of color just like them.
If you want students of color to not only populate your website and create an illusion but turn it into reality, bring to us faculty of color that we students can connect with and make us want to stay.
