Claiming Williams Day — a day without classes held to explore what it means to “claim” Williams, especially for those coming from marginalized backgrounds — took place on Feb. 1. This year’s theme, “Access to and through Higher Education,” was inspired by the Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to prohibit race-based admissions practices in higher education, Claiming Williams Day Steering Committee chairs Sara LaLumia, a professor of economics, and Clinton Williams, director of Pathways for Inclusive Excellence, wrote in a joint email to the Record. “The ‘to and through’ phrase represents the idea that one’s arrival at Williams is not the end of the journey,” they wrote. “How we navigate our experiences here is just as important.”
Claiming Williams Day was first proposed by students in reaction to a series of sexist and racist incidents that occurred in 2008. Since 2009, it has been held as a yearly event on the first Thursday of the spring semester.
Before many of the day’s events, student organizers read a statement about the need to improve the College’s retention of faculty of color and support for ethnic and Indigenous studies programs. The statement, authored by members of the Asian American studies student committee — which includes Hannah Bae ’24 and Sunny Hu ’24 — sought to increase awareness about the issue and build a coalition among student identity and activism groups.
“Over the last few years, we as students have witnessed faculty and staff of color shouldering a disproportionate amount of labor, alongside an exodus of faculty of color from Williams,” the statement read. “We urgently demand that the College administration commit to and take actionable steps toward hiring and retaining faculty of color, fully resourcing existing ethnic studies programs, and establishing an Indigenous studies program.”
“We’ve been trying to figure out how to get word out on campus about faculty of color retention and in support of ethnic and Indigenous studies programs,” Bae told the Record. “We know that this effort is pretty expansive on campus and should be a matter of importance to all students on campus.”
LaLumia and Williams noted that this year’s Claiming Williams Day theme intended to address not only the student experience but the experiences of faculty of color as well. “Questions along the lines of ‘How did you get here? How do you stay here?’ are just as relevant for faculty members as for students,” they wrote.
“Faculty members participate in many Claiming Williams events, and many faculty of color met with Ruth Simmons for a conversation,” LuLumia and Williams continued. “We hope that the opportunity for reflection provided by Claiming Williams will continue to be part of a larger set of efforts to support faculty retention.” They noted that the day’s programming was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the College’s work to create a safer and more inclusive environment for all students, faculty, and staff.
Bae offered a different perspective. “Knowing that Claiming Williams was student-run initially, and then the College kind of co-opted it as one of the its [diversity, equity, and inclusion] efforts, and knowing how it’s been institutionalized in this way, it felt like it’d be a good opportunity to capture the student voice and activism and to try to put that foot forward again,” Bae said. The pair plans to continue working toward the demands put forth by their statement, including an effort to receive more funding for ethnic studies programs.
