Staying in Sticky Faith
Testimony at InterVarsity Staff Conference 08by Erick Klouse
One of my great privileges and honors the last two years has been working with the Latino Fellowship (LaFe) chapter at the University of Illinois. I wanted to share a story with you of God’s faithfulness to me as I’ve been partnering with these Latino students at the University of Illinois.
Last year, at one of our leadership team meetings, I had a conversation with Cecelia, one of my student leaders. I was sharing with her some of the things that I’ve been doing in the Midwest about white identity and the importance of white students understanding what their place is at the table of multi-ethnicity and justice – talking about what that ethnic identity development looks like. She had shared with me that she was what is called a multi-cultural advocate in her dorm that year. It’s a specialized Resident Assistant position. It was her job to come up with programs that promote multi-culturalism, diversity, social justice, etc. in her residence hall.She threw an idea out, “Oh, Erick, what if you came and gave a dorm talk about white identity and what the place of white folks is at the table of multi-ethnicity?” We threw it out there as an idea, but it didn’t really go anywhere. A couple of months went by; the semester ended.
In January, school started again. At the end of one of our leadership meetings in mid-January, when we were leaving and saying goodbye to each other, Cecelia said, “Oh, yeah, that’s right, that, uh, program we talked about with white students and you talking about white people and everything? We’re going to do that and it’s in two weeks. Here’s the date and the time.”
I actually wasn’t even free that night, so I shifted a few things around to be able to do the talk. At that point, we had no idea what we were getting into to be able to do this program at the University of Illinois.
Early in the week the program was supposed to happen, Cecilia called me up and was very nervous and soft-spoken. That’s nothing like her leadership style – she’s a very confident leader. She said, “Erick, I just want you to know what you’re walking into. Some African-American students saw the publicity about our program and are furious. One of them has created a Facebook account. They’ve invited all the black student leaders on campus and all the black student organizations to come to the program. They think we’re putting on a program to resist all the programs about black history that are coming up. And Erick, they think we’re going to do a program about white supremacy. Will you still come?”
There was a moment of silence before I responded. But I had two reactions to the question that she asked me. The first one was, “Cecelia, of course we’re still going to have the program. There’s no way I’m going to let you take the heat for all this publicity and all this misunderstanding. So of course I will come.” And then the second reaction was, “At least it’s free publicity for the event.” We got a lot of publicity from the black community.
I found out later that during that week leading up to the program two sets of conversations happened that I didn’t know about. One set was with the officials at the university and the administrators. The word of this program went all the way up the chain of command. They had talked about whether or not they needed to bring the campus police to the event in the dorm in case things got crazy and got out of hand. I was already picturing the headline, “InterVarsity staff member provokes race riots at the University of Illinois.”
The other set of conversations was between Cecelia and the staff and faculty of color at the University of Illinois, who didn’t know who I was. Cecelia went to bat for me; she vouched for me and said that I would be excellent as a facilitator. She is really the reason the program could happen, because without her advocating for me, I wouldn’t even have had access to the students. It was this great partnership between Ceci and I that allowed the program to happen.
I still remember the prayer that I prayed on the drive over. I took one hand off the wheel just for a second to point at the heavens and say, “Two of your kids are trying to put on this program for your glory. We need you to show up and rescue us.” And he did show up, and he helped us.
When I got there, the small student lounge was packed with a hundred students. About half of them were black students. Cecilia and her program co-director had a short presentation at the beginning, mostly about the history of the term “Caucasian,” how we came up with racial categories, the US census and a few other things. Then they added some funny observations about white people that were kind of interesting.
Then it was my turn to get up and present. Everybody was sitting audience-style, so I changed the room so that everyone could see each other. I made a big double-row square. I stood in the middle and facilitated a discussion about identity development, cross-cultural partnership and justice. The program was supposed to go an hour; it went two hours and then we had to kick people out because something else was scheduled for the room. The students created an e-mail list to stay in touch with each other and continue the conversation.
The university had decided, instead of sending the campus police, to send some faculty and staff of color. Partway through the program, many of them left because they realized it was a safe environment – that nothing would escalate and that there was appropriate conversation and discussion happening.
At the end of the program, Cecelia and I were just floored at what God did. We were so humbled by what he had done. And it actually gets better than that.
The following week, I sent out a follow-up email, summarizing a few of the things we had talked about in the discussion. I got an email back from the woman who is the assistant director of housing for the University of Illinois. Trish is in charge of the training for all the RAs and all the hall directors at the university.
My name had been given to her by the African-American hall director who was over Cecelia. She told Trish it was the best program they had ever had in that dorm, that I was a great facilitator, and that maybe the university could use me in other ways. So Trish wanted to meet me and talk about my role in InterVarsity. To make a long story short, she wanted to hear how I could partner with her training of RAs and hall directors at the university.
She said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: “Erick, you’re white, you’re male and you’re Christian, and you’re not trying to hide from any of those parts of your identity. Because of that, you are a huge asset to this university, and we want you to be at the table.”
Since then, I’ve helped with two different events this past fall, training RAs. One was situational leadership training about what would happen if a hate crime were to take place in the dorms – “How would you react as an RA?” I also led a white caucus group, where I talked with white RAs about what their role can be in justice and cross-cultural partnership.
And just a few months ago, Trish asked me to come talk about the impact of Christianity at the University of Illinois, highlighting some of the major churches and Christian organizations that are influential there. They especially wanted to hear about the differences between Campus Crusade and InterVarsity.
In retrospect, God took what was meant to be a small dorm talk for a handful of white students, and turned it into this full-blown opportunity for campus renewal. I’ve just been blown away by the way God has used very small steps, in some ways, of cross-cultural partnership. I really think the key to the program being that successful is that we have a God who honors our cross-cultural partnerships. We take a risk and he honors it.
Erick Klouse is the Multi-ethnic Coordinator for the Downstate Illinois Division.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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