Tell the Truth About Debra Hammond

For more than three decades, Debra Hammond has served as executive director of the University Student Union at California State University, Northridge. She is retiring this month, and last Friday, hundreds gathered on the CSUN campus to honor and celebrate her contributions to higher education. Debra is getting what she deserves: the opportunity to retire with dignity. Fortunately, she is not under attack. But much of the work to which she has generously devoted her life and career is being misrepresented and dismantled at colleges and universities across the United States.

Debra is a brilliant, irrefutably talented Black woman. She also is a student affairs leader whose work expansively entails facilities management, staff supervision and advancement, assessment, and, most importantly, student learning and development. Diversity, equity and inclusion are inescapable, longtime features of the work she has performed at CSUN and other institutions. The college union is often referred to as the “living room” on most campuses—it is intended to be a cozy, comfortable and welcoming space that engenders belongingness and community for every student. Inclusion always has been one of its highest aims.

Unions are more than buildings—they also are spaces where students develop communication and leadership skills, plan and host events that bring diverse peers together, work to earn money to pay for college, and meet with advisers and employees who invest into their development. In so many ways, Debra and other college union professionals are DEI practitioners. It is nearly impossible to effectively execute their work without prioritizing DEI; attempting to do so would be antithetical to what unions are supposed to be and do.

Legislators are defunding and banning DEI programs, policies and positions on campuses across the country. They and conservatives on cable news channels and social media platforms often erroneously claim that DEI practitioners are destructively woke, poisonous and evil people who hate America. Allegedly, dividing the campus community, as opposed to uniting its members, is what people like Debra are doing. That is a lie. During her retirement celebration, current and former students, CSUN coworkers, family members and colleagues who traveled from across the country said the exact opposite about Debra and her impressively inclusive approach. So much of what they expressed about her was consistent with how other student affairs leaders and DEI practitioners have long been characterized on campuses throughout the United States.

Beyond CSUN, Debra is one of our nation’s most highly respected student union directors. She was the second Black woman to be elected president of ACUI, the international association for practitioners who work in college unions, student activities offices, recreation centers and other out-of-class spaces where student development occurs. Debra was ACUI president the year that I began my career in student affairs. Seeing a Black woman in that role confirmed for me that the association was indeed an inclusive space for people like me, even though the overwhelming majority of members were white. Years later, I was elected to the ACUI Board of Trustees, an accomplishment that would have been impossible without Debra’s mentoring, role modeling, and superb friendship.

The 1997–98 ACUI president was also a possibility model for me in another noteworthy way. I have since served as president of two national associations. Having access to a Black presidential leader at the very beginning of my career was confirmation that I, too, could someday lead in a similar capacity. At the retirement celebration, others reflected on how Debra’s mere presence and her generous investment in them manufactured what otherwise would have been presumably unattainable personal and professional outcomes. Throughout the nearly five-hour CSUN tribute event, I was repeatedly reminded that Debra has long been the quintessential embodiment of the purity, purpose and power of excellent DEI and student affairs work.

It is offensive, reckless and harmful when policymakers and pundits make sweeping generalizations about professionals who perform DEI work in higher education. It is disrespectful to the extraordinary legacy that Debra is leaving behind at CSUN. Students and colleagues there know the truth about who she is and the monumentally inclusive work she led there for 31 years. But what about all the other union directors, student affairs professionals and DEI practitioners elsewhere whose work is being undermined by misinformation and disinformation? Lies about the Debra Hammonds on campuses across the nation must stop—those of us who know the truth about these great educators must leverage our platforms to protect them and defend the important DEI work they do.