Concerns arise about NTID’s progress on diversity and antiracism

Over the past several months, concerns have arisen about whether the National Technical Institute of the Deaf (NTID) is making any progress in its commitments to carry out antiracism work. I’ve interviewed six people from the NTID community to get a pulse.

One Black Deaf employee who prefers to remain anonymous out of fear of losing their job told “The Daily Moth” that NTID still feels like a “white university” and that it’s exhausting because they can’t be themselves. The person said NTID cares about its image, but it doesn’t put in the same care with its Black staff and students.

A NTID Senior Lecturer, Mr. Liam Esposito, wrote a letter in February saying he intends to resign this August. His resignation letter said he felt like he was being complicit in a racist and oppressive environment.

"...The lack of leadership and action, even with having NTID Diversity and Inclusion in place and folx trying to be of support in guiding this work, leads me to a place where I now feel complicit in perpetuating racism and white supremacy at NTID.

As such, it is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation…"

Alex: He said in an interview that his final straw was the difference in how NTID addressed two major events last year — the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Liam Esposito: What a lot of people, white people, forget is that it’s not just the Covid-19 pandemic that we need to pay attention to, but to the pandemic of racism. That is being ignored. It’s not being given the same priority or attention that Covid-19 is getting. Wait a minute. I understand cultural and systemic change takes time. I get that. I’m not saying it should be instantaneous. Actually, I’m saying it should be, but I recognize time and process is needed for that to happen, of course. But wait a minute. If you can do this and this in a short amount of time, and then why can’t you apply it to the same direction or priorities here?

Alex: Esposito was able to give one example of a racist and oppressive behavior he witnessed when a promotion committee he was on considered whether to give a BIPOC candidate a promotion.

Mr. Liam Esposito: At the beginning they were not supportive of that person’s promotion, and later after they had the conversation, then they said “Oh, we support it. Wes support the promotion. We just want to name this and this.” But they didn’t offer the same criticism to the white candidate. Why is that? And one white candidate had signing issues during instruction. I think that’s important, but there was no mention of it. Why is that? So, that’s one example recently, as of last fall. I experienced and saw it myself with my own eyes. When talking with another committee member afterwards, I was talking about racism in that process. That person said “Oh? I didn’t know that was racism. I thought that was something else.” That’s what I mean, the fact you can’t recognize racism when it happens is why it continues to happen. And then it becomes integrated into the system. That’s one example.

Alex: Esposito also said he had a discussion with a colleague of color on their salaries and found that he earned $5,000 more per year despite having roughly the same number of years of experience teaching. He questioned why that happened.

I reached out to the Ebony Club, a student organization that serves Black Deaf/Hard of Hearing students. Their current president and vice president said almost all of their instructors or professors are white and that they had a hard time finding role models or connecting with staff.

Yolanda Ford, Ebony Club Vice President:

Since I enrolled in 2018, I thought there would be a lot of diversity at NTID/RIT. I’m a NTID student. So, I’ve seen campaigns, posters and videos of diversity and a lot of people of color in them. But as a student, I’m not really seeing a lot of people of color. Like, with my teachers, a lot are white. Also, with flyers, I noticed that RIT has a lot of Black Lives Matter events. But at NTID, there’s nothing. For Ebony Club, we did have Black dialogues in which we chat on recorded videos and post it on social media. But they don’t really act. Whenever I talk about my experiences, some of them take it, but with some I don’t feel the connection.

Bobga Tete, Ebony Club President:

Well when I enrolled my freshman year, I was very new, of course. I saw a great thing with diverse students, I met many from different backgrounds, states, and countries. That is great, but when it comes to staff and faculty, that really hit me hard. But I’m kind of not surprised because I come from a Deaf school that is very white-centered. I’m already used with it when I came here. But at the college level, there’s larger numbers of staff and it should be more balanced, but it’s not. So, my goal was to develop relationships with professors because it is important to network for the future, but it’s not happening. I’m having a hard time to have a rapport with them because there’s no empathy. It’s getting frustrating for me so I just tune out and focus on my education. Focus on my grades and do good. That’s what I need to do the most. I do want to develop relationships, absolutely, but it isn’t working for me with white professors. So, I just press on. It’s 50-50.

Alex: I asked what changes they hoped to see with NTID in the near future while they are still students.

Bobga Tete:

My hope is that they provide clear and transparent information on what they are working on and what they have accomplished in relation to antiracism plans. Because right now I have no idea. They did just finally post something online, but for a long time, we have raised complaints that there have been no communication and they just do their own thing with me in the dark. It would be nice to be informed so I can know what they are working on so we can provide feedback, suggestions, or concerns so we are on the same page instead of them moving ahead and me not knowing what is going on.

Yolanda Ford:

I want things to happen quicker because I don’t want to continue to see a lot of students suffer greatly. They’re losing their passion. What’s the point of being here if there’s no connections? We came here to learn and meet new people and become involved in clubs and sports. But we feel disconnected. I don’t want that.

Alex: Thank you Tete and Ford for being willing to share your experiences.

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A NTID alumni, Eric Belozosky, has been running a #NTIDdodo campaign, asking NTID what they would do to increase diversity among its staff. He’s been posting for at least 86 days.

He explained to “The Daily Moth” what made him start posting.

Eric Belozosky: Eric Belozovsky: It all started from, as you can see below, there’s a picture. Someone else, not me, first started posting about this. The former NSC vice president, a white woman, posted this.

[image]

Eighteen white people are shown, and below that, only four Black people. Do you think four black stripes on a tiger is appropriate?

Alex: Belozosky said he checked out NTID’s 2019 annual report and looked at its report on diversity and inclusion. He felt the data was vague and was intentionally hiding that there’s over 90% white people in NTID’s administration.

Eric Belozosky: It’s very vague with the executive/administrative statistics. There are many asterisks.

[Screenshot of asterisks under “Black or African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Other Categories”]

People might look at it and miss it. While the reality is that over 90% of administrators are white.

[Screenshot of Eric Belozovsky Facebook post saying, “TDLR: We have 91.4 - 96.2% white Executives/Admin Managers”]

This has an impact on hiring standards and workplace culture.

Alex: Belozosky said he is frustrated with NTID's preference to deal with things internally instead of making information widely accessible.

Dr. Joseph Hill, who is a RIT/NTID associate professor and a nationally known researcher and author on Black ASL, is part of the NTID Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) as an assistant dean for recruitment and retention. He acknowledged in an interview with “The Daily Moth” that there is a low number of BIPOC faculty.

Dr. Joseph Hill: One reason why this position was established, and I was appointed as Assistant Dean for faculty and recruitment is for us to try to identify issues concerning BIPOC people. So, in terms of recruitment, we see the numbers of faculty and the number was low. It's low. We see it’s a problem because it’s a low number, which might be due to not enough recruitment or not enough effort. Perhaps people who recruit might not know how to find those people? These areas are where I stepped in to support and identify issues and find possible solutions to try to resolve that problem.

Alex: Dr. Hill said he appreciates that NTID Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) has now formed an executive team, because in the past, only one director position was set up to address diversity on campus. He said the process is still very new.

DR. JOSEPH HILL: One person’s act is not enough for change on an institutional level. It needs a team. So, finally NTID recognized the issue and hired a new person, Alesia Allen. I should call her Dr. Alesia Allen. She was appointed, and three others were appointed including myself. It was only the four of us. That’s what started the process. That happened ten months ago, so it’s still new.

Alex: Dr. Hill said he admits that the ODI team needs to improve with communicating their updates with the NTID and greater deaf community.

Dr. Hill said RIT/NTID needs to understand that antiracism work means to recognize BIPOC people’s trauma and hold people accountable for change.

DR. JOSEPH HILL: One thing I do know is that RIT values diversity. But… From what I see, their thinking about diversity is not what we, "we" being the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, expects from them. They think "diversity" means various identities, different cultures, and different kinds of food. These kinds of differences are fine, but we want to go beyond that to seek how the system runs and how it is harmful for those people. We recognize how to make sure these people are accountable is a challenge. There are feelings of insecurity, as no one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants to be a bad person. They don’t want to be seen as bad, nobody does, but again, how do we make sure they’re accountable? What does accountability look like? You own up to your actions, and change it. That’s all it is. And it’s not always a pleasant experience, but at the same time, we have to face truths, name these situations and push for change. We have to do that. If not for that, then the system will continue running the way it does without any change.

Alex: Thank you, Dr. Hill.

That concludes this story. We see that there are concerns about NTID’s progress on antiracism, that students are frustrated, and that the ODI team is working to bring change and accountability on campus.