Week of Belonging generates mixed responses from students

In light of recent campus events including the death threats made against the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) and the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), the Office of the President and the Associated Students of Montana State University (ASMSU) student government created a series of events called the Week of Belonging, which occurred from April 10-14.

Last week’s events included a resource fair, chalking the Centennial Mall, a concert featuring local band 70 in a Skool Zone and a de-stress day, all culminating in Friday’s teach-in. The overall purpose of these events was to create greater awareness of the on-campus resources available to students, and to create a physical community through events, said MSU President Waded Cruzado.

“We were looking for ways to reach out to students who felt impacted by the adverse situations that we had been dealing with this semester,” Cruzado said. “We translate lessons learned into action.”

The planning process was relatively swift, Cruzado said. During a routine planning meeting on Tuesday, April 4, “I mentioned something like, in my culture, there’s nothing that you cannot fix with music,” Cruzado said. The next day, ASMSU president Lucas Oelkers called Cruzado.

“I said, ‘We’ve got to make this all five days with events of different types to cater to different people’s identities,’” Oelkers said. “People need different types of resources and different styles of events.”

The original concept of the Week of Belonging was to host a concert to bring people together, said ASMSU Vice President Bella Roccisano. After receiving feedback while planning the concert that would take place Wednesday, April 12, she said ASMSU realized that more events should be done throughout the week to cover the wide range of student needs.

“We created opportunities for students to give tons of feedback to ASMSU and to the administration so that we can learn how to support people better through an event like this in the future,” Roccisano said.

Student feedback was indeed given, with a mixed bag of responses. “I had a group of students be really frustrated and upset that the Week of Belonging was happening and really did not want any of it to go on,” Roccisano said.

However, after the resources fair last Monday, more positive feedback started to come through, she said. “We heard it was exactly what people were looking for.”

Positive feedback about the events included that they provided an opportunity for students to give feedback to the university, encouraged people on campus to come together and drew attention to the issue of campus safety.

“After a long week, working hard and studying, you need some fun,” said mathematics Ph.D. student Tannaz Goodarzi at the concert. “I love the atmosphere.”

“I just wanted to get the feel and vibe of what’s going on,” said photography sophomore Amber Campbell. “I think there’s a need to collaborate with one another outside of our majors, I hope that everybody feels that they can branch out.”

El Shaddai Bantu-Jacobs, a freshman majoring in sociology, said the Week of Belonging events allowed students to express their opinions through chalk, for example, and did make a difference by having entire events designed to help people feel like they belong.

However, members of the QSA said that the Week of Belonging failed to address the safety concerns of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC students, said Vesper Remiel, QSA’s social media coordinator, in a statement to the Exponent. The group felt as if the week served as a university publicity stunt rather than strengthening connections among students.

“Walking by a giant blue and gold MSU chalk flag on campus provides no indication of support from the university of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ students who were and continue to be threatened,” the statement said. “Rather, it puts the spotlight on MSU and those not in the loop and pushing the university to respond likely don’t see any connection between that and marginalized students on campus.”

Some students who attended the events said they were only a surface-level attempt to address the larger issue of student safety concerns.

“I decided to come to the event today because I am a queer student on campus and I wanted to make sure that there was support shown for my community and other community and minority groups here,” said sophomore environmental engineering student Cora Hannigan at the concert on Wednesday, April 12.

Hannigan said that the Week of Belonging might hold more weight if there was structural change happening within the school that backed up the affirmations that they’re trying to give their students this week, such as more open communication between university administration and students, she said.

Civil engineering major Ben Meyer, who attended the concert, said it seemed like the university was trying to solve the problem with good vibes. “While I think stuff like this is really nice, it came off as very reactionary,” Meyer said.

One student who attended the resource fair and chalking events on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, and asked to be anonymous because of the death threats, said that the week slapped band-aid over students’ safety concerns. The university should take a stand instead of being neutral, they said.

The week came to a close with a teach-in hosted in Inspiration Hall, which took the form of facilitated conversations and offered a space for individual students to voice their concerns if they were comfortable.

Candance Goodman, a speaker at the teach-in, explained that friction can be rerouted in a respectful and positive manner to create traction. She explained that it can all be a springboard, as long as we harness our energy in the right direction, be respectful, and focus on being productive and communicating. If we do that, she said, we’re off to a great start.

However, a counter teach-in also occurred later that day in Romney Hall. During this event, students and faculty gathered to discuss various issues and personal experiences. Speakers discussed the timeline of the QSA death threats, frustration surrounding the university’s response, resources available to students, and other issues such as student housing.

One speaker, Stephanie McCalla, the faculty advisor for the QSA, was also present at the counter teach-in. She provided background on what occurred during the first few days of the QSA threats and explained that the QSA has not stopped its efforts. “They are still working on their board meetings, they are still making plans, they’re still making connections. They’re still making safe loving spaces for queer students and students of color to come together and feel loved and a part of the community,” she said.

“If it’s a week of belonging, does that mean we don’t belong the rest of the year?” asked linguistics major and global and multicultural studies minor Seth Fairuz at the counter teach-in Friday April 14. “The fact that none of these emails have addressed directly the fact that students were threatened, or said ‘Here is what we’re doing to look into this’ is genuinely insulting,” referring to emails Cruzado and Oelkers sent to the MSU community each morning about the Week of Belonging.

“I know that for legal purposes, you cannot necessarily always tell us what is going on behind the scenes,” Fairuz said. “But it would mean a lot to a lot of people to hear that we are investigating this.”

“We explicitly acknowledged the threat to QSA and Young Americans for Liberty as well as how they were investigated in the president's letter on March 26,” said Vice President of Communications Tracy Ellig in a statement to the Exponent on April 19. “To be clear, the email to QSA and the incident with the YAL tabling are the only threats to student groups that have been reported to the university.”

“We continue to seek leads as to who sent the QSA threat and the author will be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible,” Ellig said.

Quentin Lucas, a physics Ph.D. candidate who was present at the counter teach-in, said he didn’t think the Week of Belonging addressed the root issue of the distress. “That’s not going to change the fact that [students] have been afraid for their lives every day since they’ve received these threats,” he said.

“It’s a bandaid on a systemic issue,” said former ASMSU Director of Diversity and Inclusion Marquayvion Hughes.

QSA’s statement said more concrete actions need to be taken by university administration to strengthen campus resources and denounce hate speech, rather than leaving the work to already exhausted and scared students.

“All of us in leadership, because of the threats and the fact that resources and support for ourselves is being left in our hands, are struggling in numerous ways: in passing classes, in taking care of our physical and mental health and more,” Remiel wrote in the statement.

To make campus support more consistently visible, ASMSU and university administration are discussing the idea of hosting resource fairs more often throughout the fall and spring semesters, Cruzado said. Although Catapalooza occurs right before the start of the fall semester, Cruzado said that it might be a good idea to advertise campus resources roughly four weeks into the fall semester, and again in the spring.

“[The week’s] a direct response to what students ask for,” Oelkers said. “We need to talk to each other.” He said that this series of events was not the final step in resolving student alienation or fear on campus, but the first in a series to create new traditions for support.

Oelkers said that although backlash was heard in the planning of the events, it’s worse if we don’t swing the bat. “We’re going to do the week and if we fail, then we say what do we need to do next week?”

“Some emotions such as anger and fear, while born out of a justified event, can have a paralyzing effect,” Cruzado said. This week was to serve as a tool for students to get unstuck, she said.

During the counter teach-in, Quentin Lucas said that clear, timely and complete denouncement of any threats and hate speech on campus would be what he would like to see from the university. “This is a university for everyone, this is not a place for hate,” he said.