Why does college readiness inevitably  refer to the students’ readiness to grapple with systems that are insufficient to support them? It  should refer instead to the readiness of a college to be held accountable for the success of students to whom it has marketed itself as a supportive and safe environment. In the past few years, Wellesley has made an effort to support POC, low-income, and first generation students. At their core though, all of these efforts place a large burden on the students themselves to spend the time, effort, and energy to find help in navigating academia. But don’t worry—administrators will serve you cake to celebrate diversity and visibility.

The problem with most of the efforts to promote diversity at Wellesley is that they are focused on mentorship.  I’m all for mentorship as a component to a robust effort to bring about inclusion, but on its own, it’s only a band aid solution, and a taxing one at that.

I’m told to find a mentor who understands my experiences.  So I go to my Latina mentor. Then I go to my gay mentor. And my physics mentor.  My mentor who was a first-generation college student. One who grew up low income. The one who descended from immigrants. There aren’t enough hours in a day to go to every mentor I need to fully realize the complexity of my identity and cobble together some sort of strategy for propelling me through a system that was fundamentally not designed to enable  a person like me to succeed. Of course I’m grateful for all of my mentors and everything they do for me, but after spending so many hours getting mentored and designing a strategy, I’m exhausted. Except that it’s not time to be exhausted– it’s time for me to put forth my best effort to execute the strategy. And even then, there’s a huge chance that that strategy won’t work.  It’s not a well-trodden path so we’re shooting in the dark.

Mentor me all you want, the system’s still screwed.

Mentorship has taught me how to file a Title IX complaint when I’m facing harassment from my professors.  But mentorship doesn’t teach the professors not to harass me. Mentorship has taught me how to respond to a professor who refuses to believe when I say I’m sick. But mentorship doesn’t teach professors not to treat me like a serial liar. Mentorship has taught me to fight and fight to prove wrong the people who don’t believe that I’m capable of succeeding.  But the fighting is tiring, especially when the people who are supposed to be on my side are actively undercutting me behind my back.

Of course, there are professors who try support me, but they’re so far outside my experience that making their support effective requires training on their part.  The way academia is set up though, jobs are highly competitive. For a professor who has not yet received tenure, taking time off from research to participate in inclusivity trainings can negatively affect a career. And for a professor who has received tenure, there are virtually no repercussions for being problematic toward students no matter how many complaints are made.

To the administrators: as for the cake, shove it up your ass. Congrats on “seeing and hearing” POC, low income, and first generation students, I guess?  Congrats on “seeing and hearing” the struggles while doing very little about it. Congrats, but until I see equitable treatment of all students, I’ll go ahead and assume this means you acknowledge the struggles, but you don’t care enough to effect any real change.

I’m calling for college readiness, and by that I mean the college’s readiness to deal with the type of students it has never had to consider before.  Train all of your professors, not just ones who express interest.  Critically examine your practices to see who isn’t benefiting and why.  Engage with the problem instead of just hiring a few diversity representatives to engage for you.  To hell with “that’s the way academia has always been.” If you’re looking for a change in the people represented in your system, you have to change the system to accommodate those people.  That’s not negotiable.