By Emily Cousins | Staff Writer
The Commission on Historic Campus Representations finished and provided its report to the Board of Regents on Dec. 20. The report will be published after the next Board meeting in February.
Vice President for Marketing and Communications and Chief Marketing Officer Jason Cook said the full Board will hear two presentations over the coming weeks from the commission’s co-chairs and a few members.
Cook said the presentations will lead to the Board’s final decision at the next meeting on Feb. 17-19.
A website is also being created to display all information regarding the commission and the Board’s first resolution released on June 26.
“Chair Rountree and President Livingstone sincerely appreciate the extensive work of the Commission members,” Cook said. “They worked tirelessly under an extremely short timeframe to understand Baylor’s complete history and make recommendations to the Board that demonstrate Baylor’s support, understanding and love for students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends of color throughout the Baylor Family.”
Houston senior Lexy Bogney, president of the Baylor NAACP and member of the commission, said while she is proud of the commission’s report, she believes there is still much work to be done at Baylor.
“You can’t really change what’s happening now without looking at the past,” Bogney said. “Looking at history is one way to prevent it from happening again in the future, but I definitely think that now that we’ve looked at the past, definitely focusing more on what’s happening now and how students are feeling.”
Bogney said she wants Baylor to reach out to more students of color, because it always seems to be the same people chosen to represent minority groups.
“Within the past semester, for the fall, not only was I only on the commission, but I was going to meetings to talk to admissions counselors, I was meeting with Kevin Jackson and Student Life,” Bogney said. “In those meetings, I tried my best to refer to other students … I mean, I even went to a meeting about Line Camp. I didn’t go to Line Camp. So you know, I asked if I could bring people that actually went because I wanted more students’ voices to be heard. I think that’s going to be really important for Baylor to do in the future.”
Bogney said it’s important for Baylor to understand that minority groups can’t be represented by one person because they all have different ideas and goals.
“Within these Baylor campaigns, if you see Black students or other students of color, you always recognize them because our communities on campuses are small, but also, they’re reaching out to the same people all the time,” Bogney said. “While it is great that they want to try and attempt to give us some type of platform or recognition, we’re not going to all have the same beliefs and ideas.”
Many of the students of color Baylor relies on are seniors, and Bogney said she is interested to see what will happen when they all graduate in the spring.
Bogney said she is ultimately proud to have worked on the commission and is looking forward to seeing what next steps the university takes beyond looking at the history.
“Regarding Baylor, again, there’s always more work to be done,” Bogney said. “Reach out to other students. Another thing too is creating more resources … We’re giving our time and effort and wanting to make Baylor a better place, but also if we don’t feel supported, it’s going to be hard for us to support Baylor as well.”
