About 100 Syracuse University community members gathered in the Life Sciences Complex on Tuesday night to discuss the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s response to the nationally-circulating Theta Tau video.

The college will implement a number of diversity initiatives, including the creation of a diversity council, the addition of diversity education in a first-year course and mandatory diversity training for college administrators.

Teresa Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, said the diversity initiatives were prompted by the release of the Theta Tau video.

SU’s chapter of Theta Tau, a professional engineering fraternity, was suspended Wednesday morning after the university confirmed it was involved in the creation of online videos showing fraternity members engaging in behaviors that were “extremely racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and hostile to people with disabilities,” Chancellor Kent Syverud said in a campus-wide email Wednesday.

“Integrating diversity education into the curriculum has been suggested campus-wide for a while now,” said Teresa Dahlberg, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “The conversation yesterday brought me to say, ‘We’re going to do this and we’re going to do it now.’”

According to a document projected on a screen during the town hall, the College of Engineering and Computer Science will implement the following diversity initiatives:

• The Dean’s Leadership Team, composed of all administrators in the College of Engineering and Computer Science, will participate in mandatory diversity training before the end of the 2017-18 academic year.
• The college’s day-long retreat in August will be devoted to diversity training. Follow-up diversity training will be conducted annually.
• Diversity education will be included in ECS 101, the introduction to engineering and computer science course taken by all first-year students.
• The college will identify ways to include diversity education and training into the graduate student experience.
• The college will create a diversity council made up of students, faculty and staff to provide a forum for hearing community concerns and to help set and monitor diversity actions.
• The college will reexamine its processes for hiring and promotion with the goal of hiring more representative faculty and staff.

Some SU students at the forum voiced frustration and said the college waited a long time to begin diversity initiatives.

Andrew Fowler, a senior computer science major, said he believed the conversation would not have been started without the Theta Tau video’s release.

“At the end of the day, this is just happening because that video made it to CNN,” Fowler said. “If that video did not come out, we’ll be going along with our lives.”

SU refused to release the Theta Tau videos on Wednesday, despite protests from the campus community. The Daily Orange obtained a recording of one of the videos and posted it on its website Wednesday night.

 

Though Dahlberg said the initiatives were prompted by the Theta Tau videos, much of the Thursday night discussion centered around racial and gender issues in the College of Engineering and Computer Science and the SU campus.

“Although we’re dealing with issues that are specifically in the college, we also live on campus,” said Charity Luster, vice president of SU’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. She said she believes black people are targeted by the Department of Public Safety more often than white people, and that counseling services for engineering students need to be expanded.

Dahlberg was criticized for her brief response to Theta Tau’s suspension, sent in an email to the college Wednesday afternoon after Svyerud’s campus-wide email.

“Please notice Dean Konkol’s invitation to dialogue at Hendrix Chapel (sic) at 2:30 today. I will attend,” Dahlberg said in an email obtained by The Daily Orange. “Please also notice the list of resources. There are a number of offices who stand ready to help, as needed.”

Matthew Franceschini, a senior civil engineering major, said he believed it was Dahlberg’s responsibility to comfort the College of Engineering and Computer Science community after the university announced Theta Tau’s suspension.

“That’s all that you gave us,” he said, referring to the email, “I want you to understand how much that hurts.”

Multiple faculty members who spoke at the forum expressed support for students’ concerns. Walter Freeman, a physics professor, said students could come to him for emotional support even if they weren’t enrolled in his class.

Sinéad Mac Namara, a professor in the School of Architecture and School of Engineering, said she was “madder than hell” when she saw the Theta Tau video. She said it was difficult to address the video in class Thursday morning.

“I love that you’re not standing for this,” she told students at Thursday’s forum.

Published on April 19, 2018 at 11:43 pm

Contact Jordan: jmulle01@syr.edu | @jordanmuller18