Annual State of the University Event Takes Place

Administration gives important university updates

Santa Clara hosted its annual State of the University webinar on Feb. 16 to discuss what has happened and will be happening on campus this year.

Lisa Kloppenberg, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, moderated the webinar. She took a moment to honor the Ohlone people, whose land the campus resides on, before Julia Rubio, Professor of Christian Social Ethics, gave an invocation on the struggles of the pandemic and racism faced last year and requested the attendees to have hope for the future.

Ciara Moezidis, Associated Student Government (ASG) President, then talked about how ASG has been working with the university to increase the free testing sites to accommodate the return of more than 2,000 students to the Santa Clara area this quarter. They are also now giving out fines and suspensions to students involved in superspreader events.

“Thankfully SCU’s positivity rate decreased significantly last week to 1.7% and we continue to remain committed to working alongside the university to better develop a healthy, safe and supportive learning environment,” Moezidis said.

Moezidis also mentioned the status of the campus safety audit, which will help the campus community in its conviction to build a more just, humane and sustainable world.

“ASG has been in frequent communication with the Multicultural Center and the Inclusive Excellence Student Advisory Council as we engage with the greater SCU community in response to Judge LaDoris Cordell’s campus safety audit recommendations,” Moezidis said. “With the support of the student body, we are really excited to work with the university to bring about these changes.”

University President Kevin O’Brien, S.J. spoke on the university’s struggles through the pandemic and its hope for the future.

“Hope lifts our gaze to a horizon not of our own making,” O’Brien said. “In this very long year of separation, we realize how much we miss each other’s company, which we may have taken for granted before. Because of what we learned this year and the crucible of the pandemic, we are better educators.”

O’Brien also announced that there are new records of first year enrollments, with 16,832 undergraduate applications and a 32% increase in admitted students of color from last year.

As for the university’s finances, there is a current fiscal loss of around $74 million largely because of the reduction of auxiliary revenue and the decision to not increase tuition this year.

Justin Boren, Associate Professor in Communication, and Margaret Russell, Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, conversed with each other on restorative justice and how to implement it at Santa Clara.

“Restorative justice practices can center our BIPOC community in the matters impacting them the most without putting the burden of the restorative work just on them,” Boren said. “These practices can go a long way in helping Santa Clara become an anti-racist university by promoting dialogue in our community.” 

Russell spoke on the history of restorative justice. This concept has gained a lot of attention in the United States in the past few years, particularly in the context of alternative punishment in the country’s broken criminal justice system. However, it has a much broader, older, and more capacious purpose than that.

“The lineage of restorative justice traces back to Indigenous views of sustaining community through practices of justice and healing,” Russell said. “I am thrilled to see some of this wisdom and some of these global peacemaking processes embedded in creative new ways here to foster truth, accountability and community.”

O’Brien ended the webinar by making some closing remarks on incorporating restorative justice at Santa Clara.

“This is something that as it becomes part of our culture, we are going to learn together and over time with real deliberation,” said O’Brien. “I think this might be transformative in terms of how we treat one another and how we care for one another and I think we will be better for it as a university and as a community.”

The webinar ended with a video of Julian Nesbitt from the Class of 2020 singing Go the Distance from the Hercules movie to leave the attendees with some hope for the future.