On November 8 students received an email with the subject title “The Multicultural Liaison, The New Senate Position” which informed them that Senate had unanimously decided on a 15th position that would be proposed to be added to their staff.
This concise email let the Covenant community know that a new position, which will be elected by the student body, will be entirely devoted to someone to advocate for multicultural students. Attached to the email were three documents with information regarding the proposal of this amendment as well as a letter to the Student Association of Covenant College.
Student body president Erik Peeples ’20, the then-vice president, headed up the proposal for this position early in the fall of 2018. He proposed the position after a conversation with the Multicultural Program about a lack of communication between them and Student Senate. After this, Peeples said, “We were brainstorming ways in which we could do better.” He felt the need to give the multicultural students the opportunity to be heard on campus.
In light of this, Peeples formed an Ad Hoc committee, a temporary committee of Senate members, focused on brainstorming ideas regarding this issue. It included three Senate members and two Multicultural Program leaders. The committee’s goal was to figure out what the details of the position would look like.
The mission of the Multicultural Program is to “provide safe spaces and community where these students feel welcomed and comfortable,” said Jed Williams ’20, one of the Multicultural Program leaders.
This position is not just to be an advocate for the Multicultural Program. The person in this position will also care for all of the clubs that further both Student Senate and the Multicultural Program’s mutual goals on campus. They will oversee clubs related to the Multicultural Program by attending meetings and keeping both organizations updated on the issues and topics being discussed within these clubs.
Initially, Senate and the Multicultural Program did not unanimously agree. Two of the main concerns that the Multicultural Program members had with the proposed position were: since the student body is not comprised of mostly minorities, the student body voting for a leader to represent the minority could be an issue, and that one minority would represent all minorities on campus.
Once these issues were brought up, Peeples began to work on the issues that the Multicultural Program members brought up and moved forward with the Ad Hoc committee.
After working through these issues with the Multicultural Program members and Sarah Ocando, the then-Associate Dean of Students for Student Life, the updated version of the position was proposed and was approved, which allowed the process to move forward into the fall of 2019.
Nesha Evans, the current Associate Dean of Students for Student Life, says that she thinks the new position will be a positive addition for future students and said, “It will give multicultural students a voice where they previously didn’t have one.” Since multicultural students are not the majority on Covenant’s campus, Evans thinks that having someone on Senate who represents the needs of these students who are the minority will be beneficial.
Any member of the Covenant student body is able to run for this position as long as they are focused on bridging the gap between the multicultural students and Senate. It does not have to be a minority student. This will be enforced by requiring the candidate to have a petition with the signatures of four leaders of the Multicultural Program as well as the signatures of 10% of the student body.
Within the Multicultural Program, students are excited, and some feel that this should have been done much sooner. Williams said that “many are interested in running for this position.”
Before this decision could be acted upon, a Constitutional Amendment needed to pass allowing the number of students on Senate to change from 14 to 15. Students voted on the amendment and it passed on November 20. This begins the process of adding a Multicultural Liaison to 2020-2021 Senate which students will vote for in the Spring of 2019.