Message from the Executive Director—December 2024
Special Edition: Message from Executive Director Dr. Beth Olivares
From: Dr. Beth Olivares, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Equity and Executive Director of the David T. Kearns Center for Leadership and Diversity
Dear Kearns Center Community,
This year I have frequently revisited a poem by Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On which for me seems both a fitting subtitle to the current time, and a mantra of survival, witnessing, activism, and joy. The poem reminds us that while the whole of human history is shot through with unbearable pain and suffering, unimaginable choices and thoughtless decisions—even during such violence, new ideas, better things and more fruitful lives can emerge and flourish. It's a fitting coda to challenges the staff, students and families of the Kearns Center and university are facing.
We remain steadfast in our mission to support low-income, first-generation and minoritized students on their educational paths, and to work to remove or address institutional barriers to that success. As part of this larger institution, and of educational politics and practice, events that happen across the city, state, nation and globe have real impacts on our work. Some examples:
- In 2023, the US Supreme Court declared the consideration of race in college admissions to be unconstitutional. Schools across the country scrambled to amend their admissions policies, and nationally, the numbers of Black, Latinx, Native American and Pacific Islanders fell for the classes that started this fall. While this did not happen at UR (we already did holistic admissions, and our practices held), it impacted our pre-college students applying to college, and our college students applying to graduate school. Miguel has worked closely with leadership in admissions to ensure that professionals across the College are aware of the potential impacts of this decision on first generation students, and our staff worked tirelessly to minimize the impact on our students, and the admissions rates of our students have held steady.
- The Department of Education seriously botched the rollout of the new FAFSA last fall, impacting the ability of many thousands of students to access the aid they need to attend college. This year’s FAFSA has just been released—it remains to be seen if they remedied the mistakes that plagued last year. We have continued to work closely with the folks in financial aid to stay alert to ways this might impact our students.
- As the war in Gaza entered its second year, UR enacted new policies and procedures for protests on campus. This has been a tumultuous and emotional year for activists on campus, and has impacted many of us--students, staff, faculty and other members of our community-- in the most personal of ways. I do not have a remedy for the pain the war is causing, but I do know that historically much meaningful change has emerged from student activism on this campus. Many worlds end, yet the world goes on, changed, broken, divided, but marked with the hopes of activists everywhere.
I have more examples, but I hope you understand the larger point. To focus on our own intellectual and educational paths amidst so much change, transition, uncertainty, and suffering is intensely grueling. Yet I am, as always, comforted by the resilience our students at all levels have demonstrated, showing up as scholars who question, who research, who seek a saner, safer, more peaceful and compassionate world. Students--the work in which you are all engaged has the capacity to create just that. The staff who work in the Kearns Center share that faith and are here to support your academic journeys. But please take time to reflect on all that you have accomplished. Commit to yourself to continue the necessary work so that you can excel—the future depends on it. Please remember to nourish yourself: body, soul, spirit.
For in the words of Joy Harjo, a wisdom warrior poet, from her work “Prepare:”
You are as story fed by generations
You carry songs of grief, triumph
Loss and joy
Feel their power as they ascend
Within you
As you walk, run swiftly, even fly
Into infinite possibilities
With love,