North by Northwestern

At the end of October 2007, then-freshman Marcus Shepard was walking down Sheridan Road when three Northwestern students shouted from a car, “Go back from where you came, nigger.” Later that night, when he was guarding the Rock, a police officer asked for his WildCARD and went to great length to verify that it was real.

It was experiences like these that prompted Shepard, a Communication Studies major, to explore in film if he is the only African American student at Northwestern to feel racism. A day after the United States elected its first black president, Shepard showed his documentary to about 40 people who had gathered in Harris 107.

Created, filmed, edited and produced by Shepard, “Divorcing the History” is, in the words of its creator, a “snapshot of where African Americans are currently.” Shepard interviewed 54 people in the Northwestern community, including President Henry Bienen and a number of faculty members.

“It is really the environment here at Northwestern that detracts students from attending NU,” said Shepard, who said he experienced racism for the first time after coming to Northwestern. “It’s sometimes the glances — people looking at you and whispering, or what people will say or won’t say in front of you because they are afraid of how you react.”

Produced in a question-and-answer format, the documentary gives voice to many but boils down to a few recurring concerns: Separation, low enrollment and insufficient financial aid for minority students are driving many African-American and Hispanic students away.

Five hundred African-American students were admitted to Northwestern last spring, according to Tyris Jones, president of the Freshman Advisory Board. Eighty-one enrolled.

“Some of the main factors are the lack of the numbers that are already present and the financial cost,” said Jones. “If we have more people doing [what Shepard is doing], then this change will be brought about.”

In the film, President Bienen called diversity “a complicated business.”

“When we talk about diversity, we are talking about race, ethnicity, religion, gender,geography, profession and, I think, in many ways [Northwestern is] diverse and in some ways it’s less diverse,” Bienen said.

“We as a university have come far but we still have a ways to go,” Shepard added. While he sees a “lot of racial hostility” at Northwestern, he recognizes that the university has one of the top African-American programs in the country — one of the eight programs that offer a Ph.D — as well as an African-American Student Affairs building, which many Ivy League schools don’t have. “Our university has made strides, but I feel we still need to cross the line. We are almost there.”

Despite the divisive issue, lighthearted laughter predominated for the near-hour that “Divorcing the History” played.

According to Jones, the audience laughed because many of the characters in the film were their friends.

“Some of the comments you can really relate to. Some of the comments you could really feel,” Jones said. “I mean, they may have been said in a comical way, but they are truthful.”

But laughter might have had a deeper meaning as well.

“That’s something that you are forced to do, compelled to do at times because if you let your situation or the things that happen to you weigh you down, then it only affects you, it doesn’t affect the person who did it to you,” Jones added. “So it takes you, as a mature student, to blow it off in order to cope with it. Because if you let it engulf you, then you’ll fall subject to it.”

Jones, who identified with many of the themes of the film, was wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt, like other students in the audience. He was also one of the hundreds of thousands who gathered at Grant Park on Election Night to see America’s first African-American president.

“We are celebrating because America is attempting to break down the segregation,” Jones said. “I was downtown last night and you could tell that it’s not a race thing. Everybody is partaking in the excitement.”

While Shepard believes Obama’s qualification and not his race marked the vote, he recognized the election as a “step in the right direction.”

”I feel that it is opening,” he said. “You are always told as a child that you can do anything but until you see someone doing it yourself, you really don’t believe that.”