News
Utica School and refugee center volunteering halted
By Lucas Phillips ’16
April 28, 2016
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Last year, Hamilton College was sending 22 volunteers daily into Utica to volunteer in the Utica City School District and still others every week to the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR). No longer.
Hamilton’s systematic volunteer work at Utica Public Schools and the MVRCR dates back at least 10 years. Recently, student participation in these programs has been high. Through a smattering of HAVOC (Hamilton Association for Volunteering, Outreach and Charity) and COOP (Community Outreach and Opportunity Project) programs, Hamilton was sending between 150 and 175 student volunteers to the Utica City School District in 2014-2015 according to Hamilton’s Assistant Vice President for Communications Mike Debraggio.
Meanwhile, in 2004, the Levitt Center began running Project SHINE (Students Helping in the Naturalization of Elders) in partnership with the national organization of the same name. By fall 2012, the service-learning program was sending an average of 32 student tutors in the fall semester and 16 in the spring, teaching English language skills to refugee students in a few programs, including at the Newcomer Program, run by the MVRCR. The Levitt Center encouraged professors to incorporate the program into a new or existing classes, offering three awards of $750 in compensation for doing so, according to Project SHINE’s webpage.
Yet, two lawsuits allege that the Newcomer Program was one of two programs designed to segregate refugee students from those in Utica’s Proctor High School. A year ago this month, The New York Times reported that the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) had filed a lawsuit on behalf of six refugee students it alleged were barred from access to Utica Public Schools. This past November, after opening his own investigation, the state Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman, filed another suit against the school district claiming that refugee students between 17 and 21 years of age who struggled with English were refused entry into Proctor High School and funneled into programs which neither earned them credit for a diploma, nor prepared them for a high school equivalency exam. According to the suits, this violates state and federal education law. Those cases are still ongoing.
Hamilton’s Project SHINE was a major resource for the Newcomer Program. The Refugee Project, a program associated with the Hamilton Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), published a video online in April 2015 titled “Newcomers Subtitled (Spring 2014),” which features pictures of Hamilton students interacting with refugees in the program. In the video, one refugee student recalls being told that she “was not allowed to go to high school.” Dana Hubbard, the then manager of the Newcomer Program, is shown saying, “You don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell a kid that they can’t go to high school and had them crying in my office,” with the Newcomers Program being touted as an alternative for refugees in that situation.
According to a description of the video on the Refugee Project page, “The Newcomers focuses on 17-to-20 year olds who fall into the gaps of the educational and social services that Utica can provide them,” but does not discuss any of the legal implications of those comments. Professor John Bartle, listed as a director of the Refugee Project and on the production team for the video, declined to be interviewed for this piece.
While the lawsuits against the District only target programs back to 2007, journalist and former Hamilton professor Thomas Bass, who wrote a book on Vietnamese refugees at the MVRCR in the 1990s, believes that denying refugees access to high school goes back at least 25 years. By email, he commented on Hamilton’s longstanding relationship with the refugee center: “Over the years, Hamilton professors and people close to the College have served as board members and chairmen of the MVRCR.” Regarding the use of alternative education programs, like the Newcomer Program, Bass explained, “Throwing a non-native speaker cold turkey into Proctor High School is a tough assignment. It will only work with support services, tutors, counseling, and the kind of aid that may be non-existent. The people making this judgment call were probably acting from what they thought were the best of intentions.”
While the District was being investigated last spring, two Hamilton students were also probing the legality of the Newcomer Program as part of their senior thesis. The paper detailed state and federal education law and pointed out inconsistencies in the Newcomer Program. The project also made recommendations to the Utica City School District for how to come into compliance with education law. According to one of the students—who asked to remain anonymous, citing employment restrictions—the student saw a Facebook post on the public Newcomer Program Facebook page in June, after the student’s graduation. An administrator of the program had posted a photo of the student’s thesis with what the student described as comments of “harassment” against the two students and their thesis advisor. The page has since been taken down.
According to the student, the College subsequently came after both students and their thesis advisor. The student explained in a phone interview, “Initially, the College was very supportive because of the nature of my research. And then, once that research resulted in a conflict of interest [in] the College’s relationship with the refugee center, and because I was no longer a student…they targeted me.” The student claims to have been “investigated for scientific misconduct…when the project was journalistic in nature.” The student denied any academic misconduct. Multiple sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the two students and their professor had been under investigation but that the investigation was discontinued. Chair of the Scientific Misconduct Review Board Doug Weldon could not confirm the investigation, citing confidentiality policy.
The student “thinks certain people at the College didn’t want to be thrown under the bus and it was much easier for them to throw a 22-year-old kid under the bus…to take some of their responsibility for what was happening.” The student also believes that the nature of the thesis contributed to the Utica City School District and the MVRCR’s decisions to end Hamilton volunteer programs. The other student involved in the project did not respond to multiple interview requests. The District did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The MVRCR did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Since then, as of this academic year, Hamilton has ceased to volunteer at Utica Public Schools and the MVRCR. Mike Debraggio confirmed that and added that the College “did not initiate that change.” The SHINE program is now volunteering primarily at Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), a state-funded education program. Professor Julio Videras, director of the Levitt Center, did not respond to a request for interview. Barbara Britt-Hysell, coordinator for the Hamilton ESOL program, which worked with students tutoring at the Newcomer Program through Project SHINE, declined be interviewed for this piece.
Meanwhile, Hamilton’s literacy volunteer program, America Reads, which ran successfully for five years at two Utica elementary schools, was rebranded as “Hamilton Reads,” and now works at Rome and Westmoreland elementary schools instead.
A Feb. 25 Spectator article announcing the change in America Reads, using information from Erica Quach ’16, student director of the Hamilton Reads program, explained, “Due to confidentiality issues, Utica schools are updating their volunteer protocols, so they cannot accept program volunteers right now.”
Director of Community Outreach Amy James, who oversees the Hamilton Reads program, could not explain what the changes may have been with Utica Public Schools protocol, saying that she did not receive official notice from the District, and “ended up hearing it sort of second hand (in conversation) from two people I’m associated with in the District.” She said that what caused the change “didn’t involve any of [her] COOP programs.” Another COOP program, Young People’s Project (YPP), which tutored students in math at Donovan Middle School for six years and Conkling Elementary School for one year also stopped running in Utica, also because of volunteer protocols at Utica schools according to James.
Yet Kelly Adams, Assistant Vice President for Marketing and Communications at Utica College, confirmed that there have been no interruptions in Utica College student volunteering in both the District and at the MVRCR, calling their involvement “extensive.”
The Utica City School District is one of the most challenged in the state, and both Hamilton and Utica students benefitted from the volunteer opportunities. James reflected, “Naturally, I like to think that these were valuable programs for the district…. [I]t was always apparent to me that the Utica students really benefited from and enjoyed their relationships with their tutors. In my opinion, the latter—the consistent presence of college role models who cared about them—is as important as the former.” According to New York State Education Department statistics from 2012-2013, 81 percent of students in the District are “economically disadvantaged” while 15 percent are English language learners.
Similarly, Bass noted that Hamilton volunteering at the MVRCR has rewarded both Hamilton students and refugees: “Hamilton’s involvement with the Utica refugee center has been remarkably beneficial, for everyone involved. The students have learned a tremendous amount about other cultures. The refugees have benefited greatly from their contact with Hamilton students. One can only hope that this mutually beneficial arrangement continues long into the future.”