BUZZ
No more presentations on ‘what it means to be a woman on campus [and] person of color in a predominantly white institution’
A Georgetown University student paper investigation has revealed the school’s Center for Multicultural Equity & Access “sunsetted an identity-driven pre-orientation program” over a year ago “amid” Trump administration “attacks” on DEI measures.
According to The Hoya, the center’s Young Leaders in Education, Advocacy & Dialogue program, aka YLEAD, was changed last August to Total Hoya Readiness: Intro to Vocation and Experience, or THRIVE, which no longer has programming related to identity and diversity.
YLEAD used to “foster dialogue” about “ability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, and social class,” according to the Hoya’s review of the center’s archived webpages.
Solene DeGaynor, a former YLEAD participant who later became a THRIVE coordinator, said she was “disappointed” the university moved away from the original program.
“We did a lot of presentations on what it means to be a woman on campus, what it means to be a person of color in a predominantly white institution,” DeGaynor said. “That was really helpful in terms of understanding how identity intersects and plays a role in how you operate on a college campus.”
DeGaynor added that the new THRIVE is more about “academic success” and “access[ing] to all of the resources” at Georgetown.
Former YLEAD peer leader Dani Scott said YLEAD was “an important support system for incoming students of color and international students,” and that it helped students with “all these different identities” navigate a “predominantly white institution.”
“It was very much focusing on making people feel safe before they even got there and making sure that they knew that there was community there,” she said.
Scott added “I wish that Georgetown has stayed a little bit stronger and truer to the mission that they said that they were creating […] I feel like potentially there was a robbing of a certain community that Georgetown could have cultivated.”
Over the years, international and non-white students have described difficulty finding a sense of belonging at Georgetown, a predominantly white institution.
Bella Fankhauser (SFS ’28), a YLEAD participant and THRIVE peer leader, said the new program does not serve the same purpose of supporting conversations about identity and diversity.
“THRIVE is a good program,” Fankhauser told The Hoya. “I think everyone who was a THRIVE-ling enjoyed it, from what I saw, and I enjoyed being a peer leader of THRIVE. However, it lacks the purpose that YLEAD was supposed to have.”
Over 300 colleges and universities have cut DEI-related requirements and 175 schools have closed or restructured offices focused on diversity, according to a Department of Education report.
A Georgetown spokesperson told The Hoya the program change “was made independently of outside pressure.”
YLEAD “originated as primarily student-led and later gained some university support,” the spokesperson said. “[A]s part of a regular Division of Student Affairs review of strategic goals and the best way to serve Georgetown students in light of available resources, the Center for Multicultural Equity & Access (CMEA) decided to reimagine the YLEAD program and build something new.”
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