The Office of African-American/Latino/Asian/Native American [ALANA] Affairs’ weeklong 25th Anniversary festivities culminated on Saturday night with a celebratory banquet.
Speakers at the event included Interim Chancellor Marcellette Williams and Office of ALANA Affairs Director Nelson Acosta. The keynote speakers were Stan Kinard, the office’s first director, the Rev. Paul Chandler, a University of Massachusetts alum and John Bracey, a professor of Afro-American Studies.
Acosta opened the evening by commenting that the banquet had almost been cancelled.
“Canceling it would have been the easiest thing I could have done,” he said. “We were all very touched by what happened on Tuesday.”
Acosta said that he was leaning towards cancellation until he met with alumni.
“One young lady said to me, ‘we can not let them destroy our joy. They can destroy buildings, but not our souls.'”
After Acosta’s speech, a moment of silence was observed for the victims of Tuesday’s attacks.
Kinard, who became director of the ALANA office 25 years ago, when it was referred to as “The Office of Third World Affairs,” spoke of the campus he worked at 25 years ago – one very different from the University of Massachusetts of today.
“My first year at UMass, there were only approximately 40 African-American students,” Kinard said. “It was a culture shock. One could walk around campus all day, and if you saw a student of color, it was a joyous event.
“In 1968, the year Dr. King was assassinated, there was a series of racial incidents on campus,” Kinard continued. “Black students were verbally abused and physically abused. We began to come together at a more spiritual level, and we mobilized. We took over Whitmore, and presented the University with a series of demands.”
Among the protestor’s demands was the creation of an African-American studies department. Today, UMass is one of the few universities in the nation to offer a PhD program in Afro-American Studies.
Other accomplishments mentioned by Kinard included the creation of the New Africa House, the establishment of a 5-College African-American Studies department and a surge in the number of black Registered Student Organizations.
Yet despite these improvements, Professor Bracey was quick to caution that much more progress is necessary.
“Let’s look at what we haven’t done,” Bracey said. “Only two to three percent of students on this campus are African-American. That is an absolute disgrace. We are whiter than the University of Vermont!
“We’ve lost more African-American faculty in the last two years than we’ve hired,” he continued. “We haven’t yet attracted large numbers of African-American faculty. We’ve got a long way to go to make this campus a place where students of color want to come. We’ve got a long way to go before we can be the utopia we’re talking about.”
Closing remarks were made by David Nu
