This semester, I visited the Lehigh Libraries Special Collections in Linderman Library. I was there on a class trip with POLS 210: “Revolution on Campus,” and our goal was to understand how recordkeeping can help preserve a legacy of activism on campus. The room, located inconspicuously on the third floor, proved difficult to find for several of us who had never been to the archives.
The gothic, spacious room was lined with books and objects of all sorts. Several guides instructed us to leave our water bottles on a nearby table to avoid damaging the delicate artifacts before taking our seats. After about 20 minutes of lecture, we were invited to view the objects deliberately laid out across the tables.
What caught my eye was a class photo from 1912. Dozens of faces stared back at me from the greyscale panorama. All of them male. All of them white. I couldn’t help but contrast this homogenous sea of faces with the images we often see of campuses today — happy, smiling people who span a range of genders and ethnicities. These images are so ubiquitous that the multiracial group of friends laughing on the university lawn has become a well-known cliche.
Diversity is a picture we have grown achingly familiar with. Students, administrators and faculty champion this happy image as a clear sign of progress — progress that has been achieved through initiatives promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
But this facile egalitarianism we have come to take for granted is now under threat. President Donald Trump’s administration is openly hostile toward DEI initiatives and actively dismantling them through sweeping executive orders.
None of this is surprising, because many of Trump’s policies were foreshadowed in Project 2025, which was highly publicized during election season and has come disturbingly to fruition. To be disappointed would imply this was unexpected.
What does disappoint me is the complacency of companies, organizations and institutions, particularly within higher education.
As much as Lehigh has boasted its accolades related to DEI, I feel the university has offered little reassurance to its underprivileged and underrepresented communities, and minimal guidance for students who are undocumented or here on student visas — groups the Trump administration has openly targeted. Even the offices that proclaim to be centered on equity — several of which have undergone name changes in response to the current administration — tend to be lackluster in terms of meaningful support.
On March 26, I attended a Future Maker forum entitled “A Lehigh for Everyone,” which invited students, faculty and staff for a conversation on promoting a sense of belonging on campus. To my surprise and dismay, I was the only student in attendance, aside from a reporter from The Brown and White.
During the forum, one of the presenters emphasized the importance of making students who were previously discriminated against feel welcome at Lehigh. When I asked how the university responds when a student reports encountering prejudice on campus, faculty members in attendance gave a vague answer about ensuring students feel “supported.”
I left the forum feeling uneasy. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the neoliberal “self-help” rhetoric, which suggests that feeling good about yourself will miraculously solve all your problems.
Though I came to Lehigh to escape the prejudices from my home in the Deep South, I have been achingly reminded of my position as a Black woman. This includes comments on how I speak, speculation about my parents’ ethnic background and uncomfortable conversations about race in which I am the minority — in more ways than one.
I do not want help feeling better about something I know my white peers will never have to face. Addressing harm requires fostering an environment where underprivileged students do not bear the undue burden of being othered.
Students who occupy marginalized identities exercise emotional labor managing these micro aggressions and expend even more energy in concealing that labor, lest we disturb the happy image we feel compelled to maintain.
This labor is not the only thing seldom captured through a photograph, as the reality of class often goes unnoticed. Although college may be perceived as an ample opportunity to climb the socioeconomic ladder, less than 10% of people from the lowest income quartile will ever earn a degree, compared to nearly 75% of those in the top quartile. At Lehigh, 67% of students are in the top 20% tax bracket. This class divide has grave implications for culture and income, as meaningful cross-class interactions are stymied, at best.
The fragility of these policies tells us that DEI is often little more than the polishing of an institution — a way for colleges and universities to reap the benefits of being perceived as equitable without holding themselves to the standards necessary to actually overcome legacies of injustice. We are valued only insofar as we are useful, and the moment our smiling faces lose their commercial value, we are erased from the picture. The Trump administration is not rolling back decades of progress but exploiting the fragility of a system whose contributions to equity have been marginal at best.
Understanding how to care for one another requires us to look beyond ourselves. We must recognize the privileges we hold and those that others lack, or risk falling victim to the assumption that some of us are expendable. This work requires humility. We won’t always get it right, but the effort is worthwhile.
Equity is not an accomplishment but an active practice, and holding ourselves accountable means bridging the gaps across race, class and gender. Before we protest, we must learn, and that work can begin in the archives. These collections don’t exist merely to make us feel good about how far we’ve come; they exist to remind us of the legacy we must carry forward.
A picture can only say so much, which is why we need to do so much more.
Campus Voices is a new subsection of The Brown and White for campus community members to submit or work with editors to write opinion pieces. If interested, contact Julia Contino at jpc425@lehigh.edu.
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3 Comments
“Equity is not an accomplishment but an active practice”
There is always more we can do to make Lehigh the community we know it can be.
Excellent Op-ed! You’re comment on how marginalized people are “valued only insofar as we are useful” is a disappointing reality, but one we need to confront if we want to create a more equitable community.
Excellent Op-ed! Your comment on how marginalized people are “valued only insofar as we are useful” is a disappointing reality, but one we need to confront if we want to create a more equitable community.