Executive Staff
Departures of four prominent women of color from the University last spring have prompted some students to ask Sewanee’s administration what these losses mean and how the University can ensure that everyone on the Mountain feels well-informed, safe and valued.
Since the students raised concerns in an email campaign and attended a May listening session convened by the Vice-Chancellor and members of his cabinet, University leaders say they’ve taken steps to address the students’ concerns. But in recent interviews with the Sewanee Purple several student leaders of color voiced wariness about real progress.
“I’m realizing that people here do have good intentions to really hope and get the problems solved,” Akosua Aryeh-Green (C ‘28), vice president of the campus chapter of the NAACP, told the Sewanee Purple. “But this isn’t something that’s going to be fixed over the course of a summer.”
“If the institution was honest and direct enough to give students the truth with things happening behind closed doors, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now,” said Nakaeyla Roach (C ’28), president of the campus NAACP chapter.
Things came to a head in late April when Aryeh-Green and some other students began hearing about resignations of two of their mentors – Dr. Sylvia Gray, the University’s Title IX coordinator, and Dr. Rachel Fredericks, director of Multicultural Student Affairs. Earlier in the spring semester, Dr. Tiffany Momon, associate professor of History, resigned to take a graduate school post at her alma mater, and Dr. Sibby Anderson-Thompkins announced she was retiring as vice provost for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“We were all like, what the absolute hell?” Aryeh-Green said.“We didn’t see it coming.”
The Vice-Chancellor and his administrators declined to comment on the resignations, citing employee privacy rights and legal restrictions on discussing personnel matters. The three staff members and faculty member have not been reached for comment.
On April 27, Fredericks emailed colleagues and friends that she was resigning because of the administration’s decision to dismantle the University’s DEI office, transfer Title IX and its staff to Human Resources, and move her and others from the DEI office into a new department that would also include the offices of global citizenship and civic engagement. “I felt we were broken into pieces and scattered,” she wrote. “Part of the division was sold off to another department, with reporting structure changes that made the work impossible.”
What led to changes
Soon after he arrived in 2023, the Vice-Chancellor began discussing consolidating those offices to break down administrative silos and improve student support. The University’s 2024 strategic plan approved in August 2024 included calls for “an interdisciplinary center that will bring together and enhance existing programs.”
Then came growing pressures from the Trump administration on all U.S. institutions of higher education to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. In May 2025, out-of-state advocates filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education to challenge endowed scholarships for black students at Middle Tennessee State University. Within less than a month, MTSU’s student newspaper reported that administrators there were suspending the scholarships and halting all work involving DEI to comply with new state anti-DEI laws. Also in the late spring and summer of 2025, Belmont University, Vanderbilt University and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville were targeted by activists using undercover video cameras to ferret out lingering DEI practices. After the videos made national news, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles and Senator Marsha Blackburn demanded federal investigations of Belmont, Vanderbilt, and UT-Knoxville, Vanderbilt and Belmont announced outside legal inquiries.
On Aug. 20, 2025, Sewanee’s Vice-Chancellor emailed faculty and staff to announce the merger of the Office of Civic Engagement, the Office of Global Citizenship and the Division of DEI, which he wrote would be “reorganized to emphasise its academic and programmatic elements.”
In early September, when asked by the Purple how Sewanee was responding to Trump administration policy changes, particularly in the realm of DEI initiatives, the Vice Chancellor said the University was monitoring what was happening across higher education. He added that the changes were in line with the University’s strategic plan and were aimed at strengthening and enhancing what Sewanee offers. “We’re not just changing a name. We’re growing, we’re building, we’re creating something new by bringing these offices together that have this natural connection and a really important role in supporting and serving our students. So I see the things we’re doing here as building and creating and growing, not as a way of turning back.”
But in her late April email about her resignation, Fredricks said she disbelieved the Vice-Chancellor’s stated reasons for moving her position, dismantling the DEI division, and merging offices. Alleging “broken promises, backward progress, and false illusions of protection,” she wrote, “I will not be part of a coverup.”
Sewanee reactions
Sewanee’s final faculty meeting of the academic year, on April 30, was dominated by lengthy and heated discussion about the departures.
“It was unfortunate to see, in effect, a mass exodus of black female employees here at the University, when we had one faculty member and then several staff members leave,” said Dr. Deon T. Miles, a chemistry professor and associate dean for inclusion and faculty development. “I think it was shocking to the University system.”
Sewanee’s Student Title IX Committee chair Chloe Strysick (C ’27) who worked closely with the former Title IX coordinator told the Purple that her departure has been widely felt. “Dr. Gray played a huge role. She was a representative of a lot of students who don’t see themselves in faculty, she was a mentor for a lot of people,” Strysick said. “She really cared for students.”
Dr. Lauryl Tucker (C ’99) a professor of English and co-director of the Center for Teaching, said Dr. Gray made substantial improvements from the time she arrived on campus in the fall of 2017. “I was a student in the late 90s, and I was also here as a faculty member before her arrival. And the culture around what we now think of as the category of Title IX but the culture around reporting and sexual assaults and safety of women especially on campus and vulnerable populations on campus was completely different before we had such a consummate professional in the role.
“Dr. Gray wasn’t just adjudicating cases,” Tucker added, “but also helped create a campus culture of transparency and understanding and openness and safety and helping people feel like that they had a role to play in that culture. And that was such a valuable change.”
Tucker noted those efforts brought Sewanee national recognition; in late September 2024, Gray’s and Fredericks’ work with Sewanee students led the University to receive the second annual Clery Center Campus Safety Impact award, a national competition run by the nonprofit Clery Center. In a subsequent podcast interview with Campus Safety Magazine, Gray said Sewanee’s leadership and campus community deserved credit, adding, “we appreciate being at Sewanee because Sewanee is willing to do the work, and they’re taking steps that are not performative, but that we are all involved in the progression of the work, and so we want to continue that sort of energy moving forward.” Fredericks, also on the podcast, agreed. “100%. …Sewanee is invested in a safe and productive and developing campus. So I’m excited about that.”
Their successes, Tucker said, made the changes hard to understand. “I know that Dr. Gray was extremely discouraged about the broader political climate, and I think the way in which her role changed on campus. It seemed to come as a surprise to her. So I think she considered it a demotion before she decided to leave. I think that could have been handled in a way that was more respectful of the work that she has done.”
Although the Purple was unable to obtain interviews with the former employees, Roach, president of the campus NAACP chapter, said the staff members who resigned shared with students that they felt “dispensible” and were “tired of constantly not being heard and feeling being pushed to the side.” Aryeh-Green agreed. “Every time they would come to a room, it’s like everybody’s not hearing them out. Nobody’s taking their suggestions, you know. Basically, they didn’t feel included.”
Emails spur dialogue
On May 1, University leaders began getting student emails asking what led to the departures; how the University would work to retain black women in faculty and staff; what would be done to support impacted students; and the University’s plans for DEI. Copies of some of the emails were shared with the Purple.
Roach and Aryeh-Green said they and others organized the email effort because they felt blindsided by the departure of role models, mentors, and for those who were Posse students, the loss of staff members who were Posse advisors.
Vice-Chancellor Rob Pearigen and other administrators responded by inviting the students to meet on May 3.
More than a dozen students came to the McGriff Alumni House to detail their concerns to Pearigen, Provost Scott Wilson, Dean of the College Jennifer Cooley, Dean of Students Nicky Campbell, and Parker Oliver, the University’s vice president of marketing and public relations.
Students spent more than an hour pushing for answers, participants said. There were questions about moving the Title IX office away from central campus. The students spoke about worries that some areas of the campus was poorly lit at night – a problem others on campus have raised concerns about for years. They also described feeling unwelcome or experiencing microaggressions in classroom settings. And some said they are avoiding being out at night in the wake of campus incidents during the fall 2025 semester.
Those incidents included a student being called racial slurs from a passing car and the discovery of weird homemade trinkets festooned with images of Confederate officers with Sewanee ties, the Confederate calvary general who founded the Ku Klux Klan, and an early Sewanee benefactor who was pro-slavery and remained an unreconstructed Confederate sympathizer. Campus police identified the teens who yelled racial slurs as Monteagle residents and met with their parents and banned them from campus, but no one has been identified as the source of the trinkets.
“Some students expressed that they did not feel comfortable even interacting in their classrooms. More profound discomfort was certainly expressed about being sort of in social settings, like parties and stuff like that,” Cooley recalled. “That made me feel really sad.”
The students also asked “intelligent, direct policy questions,” Cooley said. “It was a very robust and well-rounded conversation.”
University responses
Over the summer, the Dean of Students sent emails and held Zoom meetings to keep the students informed about the University’s efforts to respond to their concerns. Those included the hiring licensed professional counselor LanJericha Finch, a person of color, for the Wellness Center and the promotion of Tarneka Ezell, also a person of color and a staffer in what had been the University’s office of diversity,equity, and inclusion, to serve as Associate Director of Inclusive Programs and Student Engagement in the new office of Community Building & Connections.
Campbell also told the students she hoped additional street lights would be installed near the University cemetery and the Ayres Multicultural Center before school resumed in August. Some students voiced disappointment that delays kept streetlights from being installed until early October. Campbell noted that she walked the campus to identify lighting needs and had to keep contacting Duck River Electric to get through “what turned out to be a very bureaucratic process.”
Following the May meeting, Cooley began discussing ways to address the students’ description of classroom dynamics. “The dean really heard those students,” Tucker said. “She immediately called Kate Cammack and me in to start brainstorming and take this on board and how it can become the focus of the faculty gathering.”
The resulting day-long faculty gathering at the start of the fall semester included sessions on difficult classroom conversations, the hidden curriculum, the use of artificial intelligence and the university’s historical legacy.
“The dean announced at the start of the gathering that this is what we are hearing from our students and we owe it to them to take this seriously,” Tucker said.
One session focused on responding when a student makes a comment that marginalizes another person, with the goal of turning the moment into an opportunity for learning rather than ignoring it or simply shaming the student. Another session explored the hidden curriculum: the unwritten expectations and terminology that faculty may take for granted but that can be unfamiliar to first-generation and international students.
What next?
Tucker said she hoped “student perspectives would continue informing faculty development and that conversations about belonging would remain part of the Center for Teaching’s work.”
Cooley echoed that. “We just need constant reminders. We need to continue to create spaces where students and faculty are seeing one another as human.” Cooley added she wants to make herself more accessible to students through informal meetings or drop-in conversations, possibly including a Nov. 4th Tea with the Dean gathering.
Pearigen told the Purple that the departures and the issues students have raised have been “a reminder to do even more, in even more intentional ways, to make this community a place of belonging.” Since the beginning of the semester, he and Provost Wilson have renewed writing Messages from Walsh-Ellett, regular emails to the University community discussing events, issues and administration actions across campus.
In late August, the provost emailed the campus community that Title IX would have an office in Carnegie Hall in addition to its office in the HR building. While a search for a permanent Title IX coordinator continued, he added, HR director Brian Evans would serve as interim Title IX head. The email noted Evans had a Title IX coordinator role from 2012-2022 at Johnson County Community College and Chattanooga State Community College.
Miles, who is on the Title IX search committee, told the Purple the coordinator search has had “some challenges,” adding, “instead of hiring someone that may not be the best candidate for us, we decided to pause the search for a bit.”
Earlier this month, Dean Campbell emailed all students about new developments. Though the summer Title IX search was suspended, she wrote, it will resume before winter break and “will include a screening committee of students, faculty, and staff to ensure broad campus representation throughout the process.” The email also noted the new street lights as well as new University shuttle stops at the multicultural house, the WICK and the EQB monument.
Though Tucker said she remains “concerned and upset that we don’t have Dr.Gray here but I am hopeful about a new culture of transparency and I am hopeful that we will find a good Title IX coordinator to do this important work.”
She also noted that the recent faculty gathering and The University’s other recent steps represent progress in addressing Sewanee’s fraught history and origins. “It has taken huge steps forward. I know that can be potentially difficult to appreciate for folks who have just been here for a couple of years, but compared to how it was when I was a student, it was vastly better. And I think there’s a lot of work still to be done.”
The students involved credit their activism for prodding change, but want more. “We shouldn’t be worried about when the next thing is going to happen,” said Roach. “We’re asked for specific actions, timelines, and accountability. The impact does not have to be immediate, but we need to see a clear timeline of what will be done to ensure future Sewanee classes do not endure with what we have.”
Sewanee Purple advisor Lee Hancock (C ‘81) contributed research to this article.