Elizabeth Jones resigned as Latino community coordinator of the Multicultural Resource Center (MRC) on Nov. 15, sending shockwaves through Oberlin’s multicultural community.
Jones, who left for financial and family reasons, was a key player in a department that is, at this point, struggling to survive. The MRC has dwindled in recent months from a staff of five to three. Last May, Kwame Willingham, former Africana community coordinator, left when his two-year contract terminated. His position remains vacant.
Director of the MRC Rachel Beverly stressed that Jones resigned for mostly personal reasons, but added that the College’s new definition of internship positions didn’t give her reason to stay. In April, the College, responding to its financial woes, eliminated the intern position held by all four of the MRC’s community coordinators. After fervent protest, interns were reinstated on one-year contracts.
Diana Roose, special consultant to President Dye, said that Jones’s departure may be symptomatic of a larger problem.
“The interns have not always been confident that their jobs have a future,” she said. She added that changes last year in the status of interns, “increased the general uncertainty and anxiety.”
The interns’ small salary — under $20,000 a year — has also increased staff turnover, Beverly and others agreed.
Under intense pressure, the remaining MRC staff is struggling to do the work of the absent coordinators while searching for new prospects.
“These departures have had a tremendous effect [on the MRC],” Beverly said. “We will have to reduce our programming and visibility.”
The Latino and Africana communities on campus are already suffering from the loss of their representatives. Many students, while sympathetic with Jones’s reasons for leaving, were shocked and distressed when they learned of her departure.
“The Latino community coordinator provides an invaluable service to students and to the community at large,” senior Nicolas Stahelin, an MRC student worker and member of La Alianza Latina said. La Alianza Latina is the unifying Latino organization on campus. “As a direct result of her departure, Hispanic/Latino/a students at Oberlin have lost a significant source of institutional support.”
The main task of community coordinators is to guide students through the planning of multicultural events, which involves budgeting and fundraising, contacting professionals beyond Oberlin and networking with faculty.
Jones was central to the creation of this year’s Hispanic/Latino Heritage Month, a series of talks, banquets and music celebrations spanning September and October.
Coordinators are also surrogate social workers.
“She was someone you could just talk to,” senior Viviana Westbrook, a member of La Alianza Latina, said of Jones. “That’s the great thing about the MRC. You see students go up there to talk to the community coordinators because they feel that they will find support.”
The Administration has made tentative plans to look into the MRC’s structure and broader issues of diversity. The most ambitious work-in-progress is a task force that will examine Oberlin’s diversity on several fronts.
But some complain that while the Administration is willing to brainstorm, the ideas it proposes rarely take off.
“Why is nothing happening with the task force? It’s already late in the semester,” senior Caleb Miller, co-chair of ABUSUA said, expressing his frustration. “The College has handled [the MRC] situation so poorly,” he concluded.