The College of William & Mary is forming a task force focused on studying the state of race relations on its campus.
William & Mary President Taylor Reveley announced the creation of the committee in a release to members of the college community Monday.
The committee will be helmed by the college’s chief diversity officer Chon Glover. The membership of the committee has not yet been announced, and its full charge is being finalized.
University spokesman Brian Whitson said the task force would include college faculty, staff, students and alumni.
In his statement, Reveley said the committee would foster campus-wide conversations on issues related to race relations at William & Mary to create a community of respect.
“We need to engage difficult racial issues at William & Mary, just as we grapple with those raised by sexual assault and harassment,” Reveley said in the news release. “The necessary conversations and inquiries will not be simple or easy. But these are the very sorts of discussions a W&M education prepares us to undertake.”
Whitson said events occurring at the college and nationwide motivated the creation of the task force and “highlighted the need to have an open and honest dialogue on [the] campus about racial issues.”
The recent police-related killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in New York have generated national discussions on the current state of race relations in the U.S.
Those events spurred several “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations organized by William & Mary students, including a march in Merchants Square in November, and a “die-in” at the college’s Swem Library in December.
William & Mary has also seen race-related controversy in recent weeks, stemming from a suggestive party put on by three Greek organizations at the college.
A party sponsored by the college’s chapters of the Sigma Pi fraternity and Kappa Alpha Theta sorority has been critiqued as racially insensitive by members of the William & Mary community for its theme, “Gangsters and Golfers.”
Partygoers arrived at the off-campus mixer, held at the Green Leafe Café, wearing gang-inspired costumes, eliciting negative comments in the William & Mary social media sphere.
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