Each time a student makes the claim that Hofstra University is a public relations firm masquerading as an educational institution, we are told that we are allowing a small amount of negative experiences here to cloud our ability to recognize the beauty of student life and opportunities.
Students organizing to protect the African studies program at Hofstra University have been met with much of the same rhetoric.
When I first seriously considered Hofstra, I knew that one of the most appealing characteristics of this university was its journalism program. After inquiring about campus life for black students, I was told about a vibrant African studies program, several student organizations and the Office of Intercultural Engagement & Inclusion.
What I was not aware of during this conversation is that I was playing the popular children’s game two truths and one lie, the lie being the vibrant African studies program.
It was not until well into my first semester at Hofstra University that I was explicitly told the truth. While African studies is advertised by Pride Guides, the Center for University Advising and the Hofstra College of Liberal Arts and Sciences website, it would not be possible for me to complete the minor because there were just not enough courses being offered.
When I asked what other opportunities there were for me to immerse myself in studies relating to Africa and the black diaspora, I was told that there are hundreds of other opportunities that I could explore but just not African studies.
That was the first red flag that went up for me about Hofstra University. After that moment, the red flags came en masse, making campus look like one giant red blob.
Each time I stated that only offering two of the 37 courses on the books and actively undermining the African studies department was false advertising, I was told that the department does exist. It was students like me, who ask for courses and then do not enroll in them, that hurt the department most.
While I did not recognize it as such until writing it down, this is textbook gaslighting. Gaslighting, to cite Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a a technique of “deception and psychological manipulation ... Its effect is to gradually undermine the victim’s confidence in his own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood … reality from appearance, thereby rendering him pathologically dependent on the gaslighter in [validating] his thinking or feelings.”
It’s difficult to interrogate your university’s priorities when you begin to question whether your observations are reality or if they are pieces of something you’ve created in your head.
The cruelty of this tactic, as it relates to the relationship between Hofstra University and its students, is that it is used to convince us that students dictate the priorities of this university, so when we fall through the cracks it is somehow because we have found these cracks ourselves and have forced our bodies through them.
Gaslighting absolves Hofstra University of blame for the collapse of any department and of blame for the quality of any specific professor because students are allegedly calling the shots.
And that’s how this entire university sustains itself.
