Roxane Gay ‘92 Speaks at MLK Day

By: David Chen, Kaylee Chen, Jessica Huang, and Athena Wang

The Academy celebrated its 31st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day with keynote speaker Dr. Roxane Gay ’92. Gay is a visiting professor at Yale University and the author of the New York Times bestseller Bad Feminist. In line with the day’s theme of “(Beyond a) Day of Service,” students and faculty were invited to engage in asynchronous activities ranging from a virtual museum tour to a civil rights songs playlist.

“We encourage you to learn about the service of civil rights leaders and take part in service opportunities in your own communities,” Director of Equity and Inclusion Dr. Stephanie Bramlett wrote in a schoolwide email on behalf of the 2020-2021 MLK Day Committee

The celebrations kicked off on January 15 with the MLK Day preview Assembly and UnSilenced, a series of performances where students engaged in social activism through music, poetry and dance. 

In response to feedback from previous years, the Academy hosted MLK Day celebrations on Monday, the official holiday, rather than the preceding Friday. “This is a huge improvement because it lets us celebrate in real time with everybody else in the country,” English Instructor and MLK Day Committee co-chair Courtney Marshall said.

The only synchronous events of the day, Gay’s presentation and following Q&A session, covered anti-racism, tokenization of Black voices and what it means to be an institution dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion.

First, Gay addressed the Academy’s invitation.

“I am invited to events like these with a vague mandate to speak on race and diversity, even though these are not really my areas of expertise. But, I'm Black, so you know, that should cover it,” she said.

“These words become another empty container that people will fill with whatever nonsense they want,” she continued. “Basically, I'm invited to talk to you and teach white people about things that are largely pretty easy to figure out. I, like many people of color, are asked for solutions to problems I had no hand in creating. I will be honest, I am so very tired of talking about diversity. I'm so tired of the assumption that as a Black woman, I somehow have access to some magical N-gro wisdom about how to make the world a better and more inclusive place.” 

In her speech, Gay also mentioned Instagram account @BlackatExeter, which features anonymously-submitted experiences of Black students, faculty, and alumni of the Academy. 

“It is devastating to see that very little has changed for Black students here in the past 30 years, in the past 60 years, in the past 90 years,” Gay said. Later, when asked about the account in the Q&A, she said, “I was shocked because I could not believe that the same bullsh*t we were dealing with in 1988 is still happening. Like, that's naive of me, I admit, but like really — and then students are even afraid to post on @BlackatExeter because they don't want to be confronted by their white peers who get real defensive about it because they think, ‘that's not my institution.’”

After being asked a question about actions the Academy can take in response to past and present faculty being called out for racist actions in @BlackatExeter posts, Gay said: “Fire them. There has to be a zero tolerance policy. The good ones are incredible. The bad ones are bad, and they are dangerously bad.”

Gay recalled an experience she had as a student at the Academy. “I was sick for weeks, and she [a dorm faculty] kept asking me if I was pregnant,” she said. “I was not pregnant. One night, I actually ended up passing out in the hall in front of her door, and I was rushed to the hospital. They took me to Boston because my gallbladder exploded. When bad teachers are bad — I almost died that week because she thought I was pregnant and didn't take me seriously; the infirmary didn't take me seriously.”“

When asked how the Academy should respond to faculty members who were repeatedly mentioned in Instagram account Black@Exeter, Gay responded: “Fire them.” 

In an interview with The Exonian, Principal William Rawson explained what responses to faculty members mentioned in Black@Exeter and peer accounts have looked like so far. “The dean of faculty met separately, sometimes several times, with every member of the faculty who is individually named in Black@Exeter (as well as Asian@Exeter and Queer@Exeter),” Rawson said. “The meetings provided opportunities to process and learn from the posts, and reflect on the posts’ potential impacts on students’ future experiences in their classes, dorms, and teams. Many factors are taken into consideration when considering disciplinary action, and the nature of administrative response varies from person to person.

“The dean of faculty office is committed to promoting faculty members’ continued professional growth and to faculty accountability. Of course, details of employment action are confidential,” Rawson continued.

Gay expressed strong support for a potential stipend policy for ALES co-heads in response to a question on the topic. “The endowment can afford it,” Gay said. “I think that students who serve in executive positions for all student organizations should receive stipends.”

When asked whether stipends for student leaders were being considered, Rawson responded, “this proposal has not previously been brought to my attention. I would like to hear from OMA, the Dean of Students Office and others to understand their views on whether compensation would be appropriate, for what students in what student organizations, and how they recommend those decisions be made.”

Rawson also addressed the Academy’s plans for retaining faculty of color. “This is a critical issue and one reason why we recently appointed an assistant dean of faculty. One of her primary charges is to help develop recruitment, hiring, onboarding, welcoming, and mentoring processes that will make PEA a place where faculty of color will want to come and want to stay. We need to look at everything—the experience in departments, other areas of responsibility, residential life, professional development and networking opportunities, informal support mechanisms, and more—and we need to continue our work on becoming an anti-racist institution.”

Mathematics Instructor Gayatri Ramesh was appointed to the Assistant Dean of Faculty position on January 11. She will assume her duties beginning spring term.

Students and faculty appreciated Gay’s honesty. For lower Lydia Osei, “it felt as though the issues that have been brought up time and time again on those platforms were recognized with a new degree of seriousness and formality—I felt a sense of genuine expression when she addressed the posts… something raw and unfiltered that I didn’t know I was waiting to hear until that point,” Osei said.

“The Academy honoring MLK Day feels as though they actually do care about making sure students pay attention to themes of injustice to people of color, especially Black people… I feel as though there is a greater sense of belonging here for me at the Academy, which can be hard to feel sometimes,” Osei continued.

English Instructor Mercy Carbonell added, “What I appreciate about Gay is that she does not mince words, she tells the truth and she does not try to please those in power.”

“She has nothing to lose, like she can speak the truth in a way that people within the community maybe cannot. Maybe she will inspire us to speak the truth the way she does,” English Instructor Christina Breen said.

Gay’s words spurred student reflect on actions the Exeter community must take to become anti-racist. “Talking doesn't give a solution but rather our actions and the steps we take to figuring out the problem. I think that was my biggest takeaway,” upper Aaron Venzon said. 

Traditionally, the Academy’s official MLK Day has opened with a keynote presentation, after which students attended workshops offered by social activists and educators. The decision to eliminate synchronous workshops in this year’s program was a “multi-layered [one],” according to Marshall. “We already spend so much time in classes and clubs and advising and all those meetings in front of Zoom,” Marshall said. “We wanted to find a way to get people away from the computers.”

Further informing that decision was a focus on creating a fair experience. “It was really important to us to make a day that was equitable for everybody,” Marshall continued. “We didn't want people to feel they had to get up early or stay up late or interrupt things that were happening in their own household during the day to stop and participate in things.”

“I think keeping a lot of the events asynchronous was actually a smart move which allowed everyone to accommodate their own circumstances. I don’t know what I would’ve done differently,” Osei said. 

All asynchronous events were offered to further the committee’s goal of promoting community service. “If everybody really does the things they're supposed to do — 1100 Exonians doing something good all around the world — that’s a positive difference,” MLK Day Committee member and upper Eleanor Bolker said. “My real hope would be that there will be people who come out of it more interested in doing more.”

Prep Jane Park believed the program did not represent King’s legacy enough. “I was looking forward to a more in-depth and comprehensive overview of Dr. King’s life and the legacy he left behind. I would say I was shocked to see this wasn’t the case, especially knowing that the Academy cancelled all classes for this day,” Park said.

“It's a chance to turn inward, and to kind of check in with each other, which is really different than sitting and spending a day in workshops,” Marshall said. “Just because you're in the room doesn't necessarily mean that you are engaged… having [the ability to make] personal decisions about how to spend the day and how to celebrate Martin Luther King's life, to me, is a more effective way of doing the programming. It really makes more of an invitation to delve in.”

Carbonell reflected on Gay’s call for increased antiracist efforts at Exeter. “I have no idea how the administration will respond. What I want to know is what the administration will do?” she said.