Reflection on College of the Pacific Dean Search
Preface:
A previous version of this letter was sent under the subject “[Response Requested] Reflection on the College of the Pacific Dean Search Committee” to President Callahan, Vice President Blandizzi, Vice President Lomax-Ghirarduzzi, and Provost Pallavicini on Tuesday, September 6th, 2022. This current version was edited for greater clarity and better readability, and was sent to The Pacifican on Friday, September 16th, 2022 for publication. The message of a call for institutional change remains as consistent and strong as it was in the version sent to the administration listed above.
Of the recipients of this reflection, Vice President Lomax-Ghirarduzzi and Provost Pallavicini were the only two to respond, both responding on September 6th. Based on the meeting I had with Provost Pallavicini on the 8th of September, both President Callahan and Vice President Blandizzi are aware of the letter, but they have not personally reached out to me. The next steps that Provost Pallavicini and I discussed will be listed at the end of this reflection.
Thank you for reading this reflection. I encourage you to share it with others and make sure that the goals of this letter are actually achieved, whether that be through the next steps that Provost Pallavicini and I established, or through recommendations you may have. If you have any questions, comments, or would like the original version of this reflection, please email me at v_martinez20@u.pacific.edu. Thank you again.
To: Students, Staff, Faculty, and Administration of the University of the Pacific
CC: Guiying (Angel) Zhong, ASuop President; Brooke Hân Trần, ASuop Vice President; Cabinet of the Associated Students of the University of the Pacific; Jose Flores-Jimenez, ASuop Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I.); Senate of the Associated Students of the University of the Pacific; Lorenzo Spaccarelli, ASuop Senator of the College of the Pacific
From: Victoria Martinez, ASuop Senator at-Large
Date: September 6, 2022
RE: Reflection on the College of the Pacific Dean Search Committee
Hello all,
My name is Victoria Martinez. I am a second-year Sociology and Spanish major with a minor in Philosophy. I am a part of the Pacific Legal Scholars and Pacific Humanities Scholars programs and am also a Resident Assistant for our university’s Honors Dorm. Additionally, I have held positions in ASuop since my freshman year and currently serve as an elected Senator at-Large with a focus on DEI.
I write to you all to make you aware of my experience representing students while on the Search Committee for the new College of the Pacific (COP) Dean. I am extremely grateful to have been invited to take part in one of the most influential dean searches our campus holds. However, I would also like to show the areas where we can improve so that we can move towards fulfilling our mission of “[providing] a superior, student-centered learning experience.” ¹ This mission is guided by our stated value of Diversity and Inclusion, where we “respect all individuals and embrace the richness that our diversity brings to us as an educational community.” ² This letter will cover my perspectives regarding concerns I had as the only student representative on the dean search committee. As someone who is wholly committed to reforming institutions to better serve those they say they care for (in this case, students), I will discuss my perspective as a practitioner of DEI concepts; my student perspective, describing how it felt to be the sole student on a committee filled with faculty and administrators; and lastly, my concerns about the disparity between Pacific’s DEI goals and its DEI practices.
At the beginning of this search, I was proud to hear that our approach to find candidates was one based wholly in DEI practices. With an extreme awareness of DEI, the committee went into the search with intentionality, aware of the known institutional barriers that would negatively disproportionately affect BIPOC candidates. I was excited, ready to make an institutional change that would help us move towards a more equitable campus and future. I was also confident that the other committee members would do their best to support this institutional shift.
The committee made a commitment to move towards a more diverse future for COP, starting with getting a BIPOC finalist. However, as I write this letter, the committee has just finalized four white candidates as semifinalists for the position of dean. I feel confused and disillusioned.
I did not go down without a fight. I endured days’ worth of hours-long meetings, and when I felt like I could not do it anymore, I stayed because I was the sole student on the committee, tasked with representing the interests, hopes, and needs of my peers. There were many reasons I wanted to stop, including: (a) the fatigue such a long, meticulous process produces; (b) the feeling of invalidation stemming from being the only student voice on a committee where you are regularly talked over; or even (c) the unique stress of not knowing if you are fulfilling your role as a student representative correctly, especially when you have no fellow student committee member to talk to and confide in. It often felt like I was expected to rubber stamp the recommendations of the rest of the committee, rather than have opinions of my own. Candidly, I felt tokenized and as if my contributions had no value outside of checking the box of including a “student voice” in the search. When I did share my opinions, I constantly questioned whether I was representing myself and my own wants, or that of the student body of our university’s largest college. Despite this, I stayed until the end, fulfilling my duties to the best of my ability. And at the end of our final meeting before our campus would be introduced to the four semifinalists, I reminded the committee that we did not fulfill our aim for diversity that we so boldly stated and situated ourselves toward.
I believe that we failed for a few reasons. The most critical failure was that we could get away with merely stating our goal of getting diverse candidates, without fear of any tangible repercussions for failing to achieve this goal. This letter is the only semblance of accountability we will have. We need to be held responsible for being complicit in a system that operates in direct opposition to our promises of building a more equitable future. The committee's acknowledgement of participation in an inequitable system, paired with a lack of disruption against it, perpetuates a culture where the University can aspire to grandiose goals of DEI, without having any sort of accountability or repercussion in place should these goals fail to be met . We are not penalized for disregarding Pacific’s value of “[demonstrating] integrity in our actions [or striving] to always do the right thing and [holding] ourselves and others accountable.” ³ For example, at a university where the student body is 37% Asian⁴ , it would be natural to assume the final candidates for the dean position would reflect this. Additionally, with our school striving to label itself a Hispanic Serving Institution in the future, why was there no push to ensure that at least one semifinalist candidate represented this goal? It all comes back to committees, like mine, that are not held responsible for failing to follow through with putting forth racially diverse candidates.
However, when it comes to accountability, it is truly unfair to pin this all on those with DEI in their title. As I stated earlier, each individual in the committee went in with an understanding of our goal and the importance of getting a BIPOC finalist at the very least. They were equipped with the mental toolkit of how to get there, which I reiterated at the meeting preceding the introduction of candidates to our university. However, even with the reminder, there was no jump to action or reconsideration of our final four candidates; instead I was given an excuse to justify our predicament and subsequent further inaction. This failure cannot fall squarely on the shoulders of the institution's designated DEI officers, as it was abundantly clear that all search committee members were knowledgeable of our DEI goals, their importance, and how to take initiatives to accomplish them.
Before I end this reflection, I want to describe what my last meeting to date was like. At this final meeting, I requested to have another student representative share what happened at the student forum (this student was the one who moderated the forums via Zoom while I was sick with COVID-19). I stated that I wanted to provide students the opportunity to be properly represented, just as faculty have the luxury of doing for themselves and their departments. Unfortunately, my request was denied. Despite this, I tried my best to ensure that the students’ comments from the forum were shared in our meeting by reading the student forum moderator’s notes aloud. Ironically, these student perspectives were highly praised for asking the hard hitting questions and for giving greater insight into the candidates.
This shows that the student perspective is not trivial or unimportant in any way. In fact, we are in the perfect position to ask the tough questions for our professors, ones they may feel might put their workplace comfortability in jeopardy. However, this experience also shows that there is a glaring flaw in how the crucial perspective of students is so easily brushed off and disregarded. Because what is the request of one student, even though this student is tasked with representing the whole student body of a college?
To end this reflection, I want to address the intended readers separately. For the students, I want you to know that the student representatives who go on search committees truly do this because we care about you and take our position of representing students seriously. You are our main motivation, and we will work as hard as we can, even at the expense of our mental health, to represent you and your needs. This institution is here to serve us, priding itself on being “student-centered: [with its] students [coming] first in everything [it does]… student impact [being] an important consideration in every decision [it makes]”. ⁵ Therefore, as your student representative, I feel the need to hold Pacific to that promise.
For the administration, this is a call to action. We need to change our current situation to be better for the future. We need to prioritize the students as much as we claim to, and this looks like adding more students to these search committees. No student should have to be placed in a situation where they feel tokenized, overworked, and constantly doubtful of their own intentions, all in the name of representing those they care about. This will not only improve the well-being of the students on these search committees, but it will ultimately lead to better student representation and likely more diverse candidates to represent the values of the students. Commending the efforts of the student representatives is a start, but true appreciation of our effort is seen in action that addresses our struggles and concerns.
None of this is to say that I am not grateful to be provided the opportunity to represent the students in this capacity. It is also not to say that our next College of the Pacific dean will be unsuccessful; all of the candidates were brilliant and the top candidates have a commitment to students and DEI that I believe will improve the College. Rather, I write this because I am indebted to Pacific, and I want it to help fulfill the goals it sets forth. What has occurred with COP and its dean search is likely also affecting our university as a whole. My goal in this letter is to acknowledge that while, yes, all of the final candidates we put forth were very DEI-minded and may have even done countless hours of research on the topic, they have never lived in the skin of a BIPOC person. They will never truly understand the experience of having a skin color other than white, and what that will afford you in America or in its education system. With this piece, I hope to bring awareness to these areas of improvement so that we can ultimately be the university we strive to be. I am extremely grateful to have been given the opportunity to serve the students in such an important capacity. I learned a lot about myself, my judgment, and most importantly, my courage. For that, I am indebted to this school. I now know that when it comes down to it, I am willing to speak up for what I believe in. I learned that there are people that support me, and I am thankful for their check-ups and genuine care throughout this whole process. This is an opportunity that I would love for other students to be afforded, and I will strive to ensure that it will be under better circumstances than those that I have outlined above.
Thank you for your time and for reading my reflection. I hope that we can work together to do better--to do right by our community.
Best regards,
Victoria Martinez (She/Her/Hers)
University of the Pacific | Class of 2025
Sociology and Spanish; Philosophy Minor
Senator at-Large, Finance Committee Chair | ASuop
I respectfully acknowledge I attend the University of the Pacific's Stockton Campus which is located on the ancestral homeland of the Northern Valley Yokuts, who were forced to cede their land.
The Next Steps Discussed on September 8th, 2022 (paraphrased from an email sent by Provost Pallavicini on September 9th):
Adding more students to search (and possibly other) committees. This would require a change in the faculty handbook or a shift in administration to student ratio on the committee.
Dr. Blandizzi will help students understand their roles and responsibilities on committees so their experience is positive and rewarding. The committee will be better informed of the roles and responsibilities of students on the committee.
There will be more accountability for DEI; we will all be working with Mary Lomax-Ghiraduzzi and the new Chief People Officer to institutionalize best practices and set expectations.
Zoom will be avoided as much as possible, it will help in open conversations in large groups so everyone feels heard.
(“History & Mission,” University of the Pacific, accessed August 2022, https://www.pacific.edu/about-pacific/history-mission, Our Mission.
“Our Values,” University of the Pacific, accessed August 2022, https://www.pacific.edu/values, Diversity and Inclusion.)
“Our Values,” University of the Pacific, accessed August 2022, https://www.pacific.edu/values, Integrity and Accountability.
College Board, “College Board,” BigFuture College Search, accessed August 2022, https://bigfuture.collegeboard.org/college-profile/university-of-the-pacific/campus-life, Race and Ethnicity.
“Our Values,” University of the Pacific, accessed August 2022, https://www.pacific.edu/values, Student-Centered.