Nearly two years after the October 1995 death of Ed Hill, founder of the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, the center still functions without a full-time director. In the wake of the campus' recent series of racially charged incidents and protests, however, a candidate search that has moved in fits and starts since Hill's death has suddenly escalated to the top of the administration's agenda.
Hoping to fill the void expeditiously, Vice President for Student Affairs Janet Dickerson said that a nationwide search should yield a new director by the fall of 1998.
"The director of the Mary Lou Williams Center has, in the past, been an important resource to and advocate for African-American students," President Nan Keohane said. "The need for such a person at Duke is clear, and the [Mary Lou Williams] Center is one good place to locate such a person, perhaps the most obvious. Having this idea work well depends on finding the right person, and I know that... Dickerson and the provost are giving a high priority to this for the coming year."
Prioritize the selection of a new full-time director for the center was articulated repeatedly to the Board of Trustees earlier this month by Takcus Nesbit, Trinity '97 and immediate-past president of Duke Student Government, and Trinity junior Tobie Wilder, president of the Black Student Alliance.
Nesbit and Wilder echoed the sentiments of the campus' black community, many whose members marched in the "Respect Me" protest on April 30, the last day of classes. The protest helped renew dialogue about the search for a permanent director.
"[The center] should be a resource for the community on campus and serve to help to foster a sense of multiculturalism on campus," Wilder said. "The director should be a tangible person... that has a full-time commitment and serve as a resource... educating on subcultures within the Duke community."
During Hill's tenure as director of the center, his salary was derived from the budgets of both the Office of Student Affairs and the English department, in which Hill was a faculty member. The search process for a new director, therefore, fell under the jurisdictions of both student affairs and the Arts and Sciences Council, which oversees all of Trinity College. Dickerson said a search committee led by Maureen Cullins, dean of campus community development, had narrowed the field of candidates produced by a nationwide search down to two finalists by the fall of 1996.
But in October, Dickerson continued, "for several reasons-one was that full funding was not assured-we halted the search." Wilder elaborated, saying that the Office of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had failed to provide the necessary salary resources to complete a hiring.
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences William Chafe, however, said the search was stopped because the candidates for the position were not acceptable to both student affairs officials and representatives from Arts and Sciences.
"The search committee was not able to come up with a candidate who would be satisfactory-period," Chafe said, emphasizing that funding was never an issue in the decision to suspend the search.
To ensure that the director's salary could be paid solely from the student affairs budget, Dickerson said she restructured the center's directorship to be an annually appointed "artist-in-residence" during the student affairs budget hearing in early 1997.
"I [restructured the position] because it was my understanding that this... was not a high priority for arts and sciences funding," she said.
Although Chafe maintained that the Arts and Sciences Council always held an active interest in the search for the new director, he added that he will meet with Dickerson in the next two weeks to determine his office's role in the resuscitated search process.
Chafe also said that he has always recognized the necessity of appointing a permanent director for the center. Although he said he always intended that a new director would be selected, "the question was the importance that the students placed on filling the position."
Dickerson appeared to welcome the council's involvement. "Recently, we have learned that arts and sciences will contribute to the position, so we will reopen the national search," she said. "We have been instructed by the provost and the president to restart the search."
Since the onset of Hill's illness and during the time since his death, Cullins has handled the center's operations. Dickerson said that Cullins is currently trying to secure an artist-in-residence to handle the center's directorship for the 1997-98 academic year.
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