Association of Vanderbilt Black Alumni, including quotations from its by-laws

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 20:50:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jonathan Farley <lattice@math.harvard.edu>
To: Myria Carpenter <mcarpen9@utk.edu>
Cc: Moniqueka Gold <mgold@apsu.edu>
Subject: United Daughters of the Confederacy and Association of Black Vanderbilt
Alumni

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, mcarpen9 wrote:

Dear Mr. Farley,

I apologize for the delay in responding to you. I appreciate your efforts in
bringing this issue to the attention of the AVBA. I am aware of the lawsuit
between Vanderbilt and the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Because the AVBA is a component of the Vanderbilt Alumni Association, I
am not in the position to issue a public statement as it is outside the
purview
of the AVBA and the Vanderbilt Alumni Association to make official comments
on University operational decisions.

Myria Carpenter
Doctor of Jurisprudence candidate - 2006
Treasurer, Student Bar Association
Student Attorney, Off. of Student Judicial Affairs

July 5, 2005

Dear Myria,
Thank you for your email. While I was a professor at Vanderbilt, I was always a supporter of black students, attending many if not all AVBA events, as Ms. Dunlap could attest, and serving as the advisor for the Organization of Black Graduate and Professional
Students for several years, serving as the advisor of the Caribbean Students Association, and attending more meetings of the Black Student Alliance than its faculty advisors. I also assisted black fraternities I did not belong to as well as black sororities, both at Vanderbilt and at Fisk and Tennessee State University.

"The AVBA works to build closer ties between African-American alumni and the University and to assist in addressing specific concerns of minorities in the Vanderbilt community." Its broad purpose is "to maintain communications and dialogue with the administration and faculty of the University on matters affecting the accessibility of University programs, services and benefits to black students, faculty, staff and alumni, and the development of policies and procedures to promote their wider participation in University and campus affairs." The University Affairs committee is "concerned with the administration and governance of the University and the impact of policies and procedures on black students, faculty, administrators, and staff. It also relates to the relationship of the University to the larger black community of Metropolitan Nashville. Key contact areas are...recruitment, promotion and other personnel policies;...relations with minority community groups, institutions, and organizatons."

If university policy runs contrary to the interests of African-American alumni then it appears to me to be in the AVBA's mandate to address these issues.

There are also alternatives: You could issue a statement to alumni stating that, while the AVBA cannot comment on university policy (although presumably you could praise university policy, since the university's official position is in fact to criticize the Confederacy), members of the AVBA are invited to contact the Vanderbilt administration on their own. You could also inform them of what university policy is, if university policy takes the form of criticizing a supporter of the AVBA when he criticizes the founder of the KKK.

If your concern is retaliation by the UDC, I would appreciate a clear statement to that effect. If your concern is that Vanderbilt will cut off its funding to AVBA if you criticize them for racism, then as a law student you should realize that Vanderbilt would be opening itself up to a major discrimination suit. Finally, why is it that the AVBA is not alarmed over the targeting of a black professor by Vanderbilt when that professor criticizes the founder of the KKK. Essentially, a black professor has been run out of Vanderbilt for supporting blacks. I am certain the AVBA would not like to let this sort of trend continue. The lesson AVBA is teaching is that no black professor should help any black students.

I would be happy to discuss this with you over the phone.

Regards,

       (Dr.) Jonathan Farley
       Department of Mathematics
       Harvard University
       1-617-460-3656