Thank you and goodbye to a wonderful era of SCDAI.

April 2019: The Birth of SCDAI 

It all started when we, the founders of SCDAI, found ourselves in an intercultural communication class as part of our BA program in International Communication. During this class, we were meant to deliberate notions of stereotypes, exclusion, xenophobia, and racism, in a way to prepare us to be more sensitive communicators with our classmates and future colleagues. However, the situation that occurred was only an extension of the widely-accepted exclusionary culture that many higher education institutions allow roaming free as “harmless debate” in their halls and classrooms. And this is not to blame our teacher who was present that day in the class, she handled the situation gracefully. 

A student expressed his opinion stating that Western cultures were superior due to their economic status; white people were to be highly revered for ending slavery, and Middle Eastern cultures were savage and “objectively” inferior to the rest. 

The five of us had had enough. We wanted to see changes - significant changes. So we started SCDAI - the Student Center for Diversity, Awareness & Inclusion. 

May-June 2019: 

Shortly after we came together in hopes of creating the meaningful change we eagerly began strategizing. The start of this marked what was a very long process of proving that there is a fundamental need for systemic reform to all internationalization/diversity-related policies and practices in our institution, the Hanze UAS (disclaimer-  we are still en route to ensure that these changes do not remain stagnant.)

We conducted voluntary research on all diversity and internationalization policies, as well as held meetings with anyone who would listen to us to help us grasp the full picture. Bit by bit, we found that we are dealing with an organization that is not all too willing to make changes - it costs money, and resources, and quite frankly disrupts a status quo that benefits a large portion of that environment and Dutch society as a whole. 

June 2019:

Fortunately for us, we were invited by a group of teachers who wanted to see this change through. They wanted to hear what underrepresented students were facing, and more importantly - what were the changes that we were demanding. And while they held little decision-making power, it already meant plenty that we were able to start a conversation.

We proceeded to try and make our plans last. We tried to recruit new members, as we were all going off on our exchanges and internships for an entire year. We worked tirelessly to collect all of our ideas and knowledge and pass it along to a group that could continue the work.

September 2019-June 2020

As we all followed the same Bachelor's program, in September we were all set to go abroad for our exchanges and internships for a whole school year. Unfortunately for us, the SCDAI project was too little developed at that point, so all the work we had put in was not enough to be passed along to a new team. So SCDAI went silent for almost an entire school year (and returned with a bang…). 

June 2020: The turning point. BLM Protests

I believe we all remember the gut-wrenching morning of May 25th, 2020 when we witnessed the brutal death of George Floyd, an innocent Black man. A death incited by White Supremacist culture which perpetuates the disenfranchisement of Black people across the globe, especially in Western societies. It causes marginalization, social disparities, countless deaths, and a lifelong struggle for equality in a society that does not want to recognize its systemic issues - the building blocks at the root of these issues. 

Our higher education institutions are also at fault for perpetuating such social disparities and are equally responsible for dismantling white supremacist and patriarchal cultures. Yet, their systems still uphold these cultures. This is exactly what we saw happen when our own university, the Hanze UAS, which had been neglecting the needs of its Black students, posted to their social media in support of the widespread BLM protests. It felt empty and shallow. We were angry. How dare they present to be anti-racist, when they allow their Black students not to receive a just education either? So we started a petition to ask for concrete policy and practice changes in our institution. No more performances. A Black square (the then Instagram trend which meant to show support for Black people across the world) in the midst of your posting schedules won’t cut it anymore. We demanded change.

So we launched a petition that demanded concrete change towards eradicating structural discrimination within our institution. Before we even hit 100 signatures, the comment section generated immense backlash and was flooded with (Dutch) white professors or employees at the institution arguing in its favor, completely dismissing every single BIPOC’s experience in the comment section. The Hanze PR team quickly caught on, and in an effort to not allow its organization’s name to be dragged for allowing institutionalized racism to remain unchecked, invited us for a conversation with the executive board.

This was a crucial moment for SCDAI, as we realized that while our original goal was to raise awareness of the prevailing issues that underrepresented students face, we realized that instead, we must focus on actively advocating by disrupting the natural flow of white supremacist culture. 

We held a presentation for the executive board which was one of its first on the topic that went beyond internationalization and into the depths of diversity that spanned further than the student’s national belonging. We were met with some level of openness, and mostly with plenty of questions. Won’t work towards equity make the other students feel excluded? Isn't Hanze's statement for tolerance enough? Why does Hanze have to invest resources into a problem that doesn’t seem to be more than a social media trend? Why have people not come to them before if this were a real issue? Certainly all relevant questions for people who never have experienced systemic discrimination first-hand. And this is not to point a finger at a specific person, at all. It is simply the reality that years of colonization, imperialism, and historic disconnect from a very dark history that the Netherlands has been a key player in. 

After this, we heard little back about what the institution's intentions were. Indirectly, we were able to gather that in fact, some structures were beginning to shift by, for example, opening research tables that investigate systemic racism. Or by creating research, policy, and practice teams to support the institution's intention toward Diversity and Inclusion. As with any large institution, such changes could take many bureaucratic years to complete.