During the weekend of April 4-6, 2003, 53 African-American male students (twenty from Wabash College) from eleven liberal arts colleges (mostly Midwestern but also two historically-Black colleges, Morehouse College and Tougaloo College), along with thirteen faculty or staff delegates from ten schools, gathered at Wabash College in a unique meeting of Black men in academia (see Appendix Z). Developed by the Center of Inquiry and planned and run in large part by students from our Malcolm X Institute (Trey Chinn was the principal student planner), the group spent a weekend of "energy" exploring "topics of concern to Black men in Liberal Arts," as one participant put it. The main goal and focus was on ways in which Black students in both historically Black and predominantly white institutions negotiate their survival and success in liberal arts colleges.
The workshops began Friday evening and concluded before lunch on Sunday. Featured activities included a keynote address by Dr. Lee Jones, President of the Brothers of the Academy, and a plenary lecture by John Aden, Wabash College Professor of History. Students spent most of their time in small and large group workshops discussing such issues as strategies used in achieving academic success, Black male identity development, intra-group differences and similarities, and the responsibilities of leadership at liberal arts colleges in the tradition of W. E. B. DuBois. The leaders of these workshops were the faculty and staff who accompanied the students, as well as a number of Wabash College faculty and staff.
As part of the workshops' aims, each college team left with an action plan for institutional, personal and community change, which should help guide activities at participants' home campuses in coming semesters. Participants considered the workshops a success, and expressed a strong desire to continue similar, more expanded workshops in the future. Workshop evaluations were glowing as participants affirmed how valuable they found the "brother to brother interaction" in discovering and sharing "effective ways to lead and learn."
This was the first student conference sponsored and organized by the Center of Inquiry. Among its most significant accomplishments for the students were the opportunities it provided for serious discussions about a number of issues, with students from other campuses and other parts of the country. For many, the opportunity to talk about one's own experiences on campus, and to hear them echoed from other students on other campuses, was itself a cathartic exercise. Virtually every student made the discovery that "I am not alone in this"Ñ with respect to his struggles or successes. It seems like many of the rewards of this conference came from the reciprocal storytelling, and the opportunities that it provided to reflect on one's own behavior, and to see one's own campus from the perspectives of others. This process of discovering confidence in one's voice constitutes an important first step in the dialogues about the circumstances of Black men at liberal arts colleges nationwide.
Notes from closing session.