February 22, 2024 | NEWS | By Seth Jahraus
On Feb. 7, President L. Song Richardson announced her resignation via mass email to the Colorado College community. The college’s board of trustees have elected Manya Whitaker, the current executive vice president and chief of staff, to take Richardson’s place on July 1, and serve as the school’s interim president for the next two years.
President Richardson’s email shared small pieces of information regarding her decision. She stated how a prevailing conflict has formed between her desire to promote her personal beliefs and her desire to adhere to the responsibilities of a college president. Both Richardson and Whitaker sat with The Catalyst in a recent interview to provide a more in-depth analysis of her choice to leave CC.
As stated in her email, Richardson plans to return as a professor to the University of California, Irvine School of Law. The president stated she intends “to launch an Institute focused on equity, opportunity and leadership” upon her departure.
“People are really running away from the term diversity,” said Richardson.
The president’s viewpoint on the abandonment of “diversity” reflects comments she made the summer of last year following the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action. The court decided to prohibit government funded universities from considering the races of applicants during the admissions process.
“The biggest fear I have as a result of this decision is that we… in [higher education] will become too cautious,” said Richardson at the National Summit on Equal Opportunity in Higher Education hosted by the U.S. Department of Education. Richardson, while speaking on the panel, went into CC’s commitment to anti-racism and the campus’s promotion of diversity in and out of the classroom. She said it was her plan to continue the college’s dedication to the idea regardless of the ruling.
Despite her outspoken ideology regarding the subject, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, President Richardson identified the affirmative action decision as an example of a topic she is unable to speak freely about as college president.
Richardson also attributed time management to her decision to leave, expressing the desire to research and teach about diversity, equity and inclusion while presenting those very topics to the public. “To think and spend all that time doing that, I can’t be a president. Because the presidency involves a whole set of different things,” said Richardson.
Richardson wanted to specify that CC as an institution was not responsible for her departure. “I’m not running away from CC. I am trying to be true to where my passions and my ‘why’ are right now,” said Richardson. “It is not that the board or the college… has muzzled me in any way.”
Richardson believes that the responsibilities and limitations of being president of a college come from the expectations associated with the position.
“It is a very lonely position,” said Richardson.
She described that as president, an individual’s voice is no longer their own. Their voice instead becomes the voice of the college which acts as an umbrella over all associated students, staff, parents, alumni and faculty. “You are the voice box of an institution who cannot speak,” said Richardson. “That’s why the role of president is so lonely, because you can’t talk to anyone else in the institution… because you bear that weight.”
Richardson’s recollection of the role seems to indicate a belief that her presence is constantly under a magnifying glass. The president recalls a faculty meeting where she had begun writing in her notebook and drawing in the margins. “I doodle, that’s how I think,” said Richardson. Later the president discovered that other meeting members had misinterpreted her concentration, instead attributing her writing to a lack of interest.
“Everything you say, the looks you give when you don’t even realize it, the sigh you give when you don’t realize you’re sighing is all interpreted because you represent the institution,” she said. “I want to be Song again. I want to speak for myself.”
A tentative plan associated with Richardson’s future institute involves the idea of presidential voice. She hopes to provide a space to discuss the role of a president and the extent to which they can function as a person with personal beliefs outside of the institution they have been made to represent. Richardson plans to bring together a “global network of leaders” who identify as courageous and are willing to talk about issues being discussed across the nation.
Richardson said that the decision to leave CC was one she questioned right up until the email reached the inboxes of every student and staff on campus. Yet even then, she feels an everlasting hesitancy. “It’s a constant questioning and reflection,” Richardson said.
Whitaker’s preparation for the position
When asked if she feels any fear regarding her future position as president in response to Richardson’s reasons for departure, Whitaker said she doesn’t.
“I don’t really have fears… I think things through, I get information, I prepare myself for all outcomes,” she said. Whitaker felt that it would be better served to ask what topics she intended to research further ahead of her position as opposed to what fears she might have preceding her presidency.
As for the possibility that she will feel restricted in the same way Richarson has felt, Whitaker said she doesn’t feel the same need to insert her personal opinions into school discussions. “My passion is empowering other people to use their voice, and I don’t feel as strongly that I have to do it on behalf of myself or for the college,” said Whitaker.
Richardson has expressed that this difference is why she fully supports the board’s decision to elect Whitaker. “We have been doing everything together almost since I got here,” said Richardson. “And yet, we think differently, and that’s what’s exciting about it.”
A main goal of Whitaker’s is to continue the courageous conversations that have been facilitated by Richardson and CC. She believes that the college has moved away from the liberal arts mindset that it has famously represented. She wants to ensure people have “the skill set, the knowledge, the space [and] the opportunity” to properly engage in the courageous conversations she describes.
The diversity concerns raised by President Richardson last July are a part of the conversations Whitaker hopes to have. “I don’t want the national higher ed landscape to make us say ‘oh, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about these things,’” said Whitaker. “I don’t want us to succumb to those types of pressures.”
Whitaker also plans to “break the stereotype” that college presidents are all-knowing in their respective universities. She hopes to use the skill sets found throughout the entire campus and administration to aid in the success of the college.
The prime point Whitaker hammered home was her intent to use her presidency to further facilitate conversations. “People ask why I came to CC and why I stayed at CC,” Whitaker said. “I always described the students as openhearted and that they bring out the best in me. So, my responsibility in turn is to bring out the best in them.”
Until Richardson’s departure on June 30, Whitaker hopes to continue preparing under the president’s guidance and experience. The two continue to share ideas and strategies for the presidential position as they await the transfer of power after the academic year.
“You are not Dr. Whitaker anymore. You are the president of Colorado College and everything that that means,” Richardson advised Whitaker. “No biggie though.”