A group of student activists at The New School were left confused and frustrated after the University Student Senate refused to fund their proposal to attend a conference that focuses on race and ethnicity in American higher education, a conference they had attended last year.

The students who were members of the High Education Opportunity Program, which provides financial aid and counseling to disadvantaged students, wanted to attend the San Francisco conference to “address solutions to racial tension in higher education” and to set examples to their peers and the New School community. HEOP is a program that works to recruit and support undergraduate students at Parsons The New School for Design and Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.

The National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education, NCORE, is a conference launched to address the resurgence of issues of racism in higher education with a focus on institutional changes. The conference takes place in San Francisco this year, and consists of workshops, performances, and activities for students across the country.

The HEOP students presented their proposal to the Senate on Friday March 18th at a USS meeting, but say they still have not received a formal response to their proposal, nor help finding  funding as senate notes from that meeting suggested they would. The students were surprised that they were not granted funding for this year after having received it the following year. “We were funded two years in a row,” Kat McCauley, a Lang student in the HEOP program, said. “They didn’t even mention partial funding.”

According to Joseph Kushibab, USS treasurer, groups are not guaranteed funding even if they receive it one year. “We believed that the HEOP department should be responsible for funding this conference,” Kushibab said. “Although we believe these students are doing a great job, we believe that this should not necessarily be coming from student funds.”

Senate Co-Chair Serengeti Timungwa also said that the senate felt it was the school administration’s responsibility to fund this kind of travel. “The HEOP mentors mentioned that their work is part of a program of The New School’s Office of Intercultural Support (OIS),” Timungwa said. Because of this, the senate felt it was “entirely” the school’s responsibility to fund the proposal.

Timungwa also stated via email that the senate receives six to ten proposals per funding meeting. She had stated that the HEOP proposal was unique. “We felt that HEOP, unlike any other group should have received support and funding from their Department, especially if going to the conference seems to be as important as they conveyed.”

Alexander Vasquez, Assistant Director to the Office of Intercultural Support and HEOP, said there simply were no funds left for the department to use for the conference. HEOP provides Metrocards, stipends and financial aid for their students. Vasquez said that after these costs, there were no funds left over to send HEOP students to San Francisco.

In addition, Senate Co-Chair Serengeti Timungwa explained via email that the senate has actually been denying more travel requests than in the past, even for people who were past recipients. “We have been denying more conference travels because we have realized that in many cases it does not benefit a significant amount of the student body since nothing else is brought back,” she said. She also said, however, that this did not apply to HEOP students. “Of course for HEOP this was not the case as HEOP mentors are a great support system for a significant amount of students,” Timungwa said.

According to Vasquez, the senate did not handle the matter appropriately. “The only way we knew we were not funded was from one of our [students] Jesus Marquez, who stayed a little late,” Vasquez said. “We did not even get an email telling us formally.”

“Someone on the senate told us we would receive an email of why we were denied and we would get a list of other organizations that could fund us,” Jesus Marquez, a junior at Parsons and member of HEOP said. “But we never received it.”

In an interview with the NSFP, Kushibab apologized on behalf of the senate for not getting back to the HEOP students about their proposal. “I completely take responsibility for that and I apologize,” he said.

Serengeti Timungwa clarified that partial funding is allowed and when it is offered to students. “Partial funding is allowed. For example, we’ve granted partial funding to some groups who hadn’t sought funding with other entities when we deemed that they could also receive funding from those other parties (we got a Dean to match the amount we funded to a group once).” Timungwa did not mention why the HEOP students were not partially funded.  

During the USS meeting on March 18th, out of seven requests for funding, only three were awarded — two were awarded fully and one was awarded partially. The other four received no funds from the Senate. Other proposals that were not funded included the proposal for an MFA publication, and another for outdoor seats in front of the campus building. On the other hand, a proposal for an original student play was fully funded as well as a proposal for a socio-economic inequality event.

According to the March 18th USS meeting notes after the HEOP proposal, the USS was supposed to assist the group to get funding from their department since the USS is currently working on a task force that will tackle departmental funding issues. According to the students, nothing was done about this.    

“These students take social justice very seriously and deserved a formal response on this issue,” Keisha Davenport-Ramirez, Director of the Office of Intercultural Support and Higher Education Opportunity Program said. “It seemed like little value was put on what these [HEOP students] have done in the past. Why wasn’t this seriously considered?”

Davenport-Ramirez pointed to work members had done during orientation week one year. Inspired by their NCORE trip two years ago, HEOP students facilitated a workshop called “Privilege walk,” for all incoming students at The New School which focused on race and identity.
In the meantime, Co-Chair Serengeti Timungwa says the Senate is looking for a resolution so that other students do not have to suffer with this issue. “We are currently working to strengthen the resolution with data and will continue to push administrators to set aside departmental conference travel funds for groups like the HEOP group.”