Unlike many of its peers in the SUNY system, SUNY Oswego does not have a Black studies major program, a fact that graduating senior Rickey Strachan is hoping to change with other students’ help.
Inspired by Professor Kenneth Marshall’s Black Power Movement course, Strachan drafted a petition that calls for a new black studies major department to be instituted as part of SUNY Oswego’s academic catalog, accompanying the African/African-American studies minor program headed by Marshall.
“Black studies is a minor, which means, technically it exists, but you have to seek it out, you have to look for it,” Strachan said. “As a major, it’s propelled more, more money and attention is given to it, which means more students who probably want to do these lessons would be able to know that it’s something that can happen.”
Strachan said that SUNY Oswego’s stated commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) would be vastly improved by the addition of this new major department.
“You look on the website, we have a whole page that leads to a whole other page about DEI, with no major programs about one of the main things that we tend to have a disconnect with, which is race,” Strachan said. “There has to be a bit of a bridge to that gap. That bridge is knowledge, which means we need classes that bridge that gap based on history.”
Strachan’s petition insists on Marshall running the department due not only to his long tenure as a professor, coordinator of the African/African-American studies minor and advisor to the Black Student Union at Oswego, but for his ability to create spaces where “Black and POC thought can be unpacked, dissected and understood in classroom settings.”
“[Marshall] believes that we leave and should leave transformed,” Strachan said. “If that’s what we’re looking for, the idea of transforming the student perspective on what it means to be diverse and inclusive as a student, we need somebody who can do that on a personal note. As a professor, he’s doing that.”
The recent protests, demonstrations and discussions on campus have galvanized Strachan’s push for a full-fledged Black studies department.
“I just think they made it more crucial that I’m looking to create something that needs to be there,” Strachan said. “All of those problems were down to the idea of certain conversations not only not happening, but not happening properly… the more students take [Black studies classes], the more they’re forced to think, and the less likely it is they’ll say something ignorant.”
Strachan said that the ultimate goal of his vision for a Black studies major is to encourage discourse surrounding issues of not only race, but of identity in general.
“I really just want to believe that with this becoming a major, it changes the scope of how many conversations are held on average about race, about gender, about sexuality, about all of those things,” Strachan said. “The ‘Black thing,’ as Dr. Marshall calls it, is connected to the ‘LGBTQ thing,’ is connected to the ‘women thing.’ At the end of the day, it’s all about advocacy on the basis of the ‘thing’ … All I’m looking for is a change in perspective, and a major department means more perspectives.”
For more information about Strachan’s petition, he can be reached at his Oswego email, rstrachan@oswego.edu.
