By Malachi Briscoe and Oumye Toure (President of the Anti-Racist Collective), Guest Columnists
This is the first of the Anti-Racist Collective’s series on student experiences. These accounts, written by students, detail what their experiences look like and how they affect students’ day-to-day, social, academic, and overall experience in college life. This publication focuses on the conduct process, which disproportionately impacts students with higher personal responsibility (jobs, family duties, etc.) and/or certain identities more likely to face discrimination. We are seeking understanding and action to reform the processes that are disenfranchising and insufficiently serving students.
Malachi Briscoe is a senior majoring in business and minoring in economics. Briscoe is a forward on the men’s basketball team and is the current president of the Gettysburg Fashion Initiative.
My first and only experience with the conduct process was during the first semester of my freshman year at Gettysburg. I just started my basketball season when I was asked to come over to the apartment that upperclassmen on my team shared. I was a bit confused and thought I might have done something wrong, but when I got there, I was told that another student said something racist about me to a girl I was friends with, and she informed my teammates about it.
Many thoughts crossed my mind at that moment. I didn’t know how to process the information or what to do. The student told the girl I was friends with that it was “disgusting” she was with me because I was black. I was taken aback, especially because it came from someone I had never met or interacted with before. This was the first time I had someone say something racist and hateful towards me. Although I witnessed racism growing up, I never had anything happen to me personally. I struggled to understand how someone who knew nothing about me or who I am could say something like that. My teammates who had previous experiences with the student told me that they had heard him make racist remarks. Once I found out who he was, I found his roster photo, but I wasn’t fully confident in what he looked like in person. I had an eerie feeling walking around campus for a week or so and nervously anticipated an interaction with him. I was unsure whether I would see him at some point, and I didn’t know if he would say something to me in person or say even more behind my back. I didn’t know who he was or what he was like, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.
At this point, my teammates suggested doing a bias report to try to get some sense of justice. We learned about the bias report form before our season officially started, in a mandatory annual meeting for athletes about Student Rights & Responsibilities. I didn’t know much about the conduct/bias process or how it worked. The information I received from the basketball team meeting was the extent of my minimal knowledge on the form, so I asked my teammates to help me fill it out.
After completing the form to go through the conduct/bias process, my teammates and I waited to meet with Elizabeth Farner, the current Director of Student Rights and Responsibilities. We thought meeting with her would lead to a formal or informal resolution, or some sort of punitive action for the student. After having 2-3 meetings with Farner, she said that she needed consent from my friend to investigate the racist comment made by the other student, but my friend was not comfortable doing this. Her discomfort may have come from fear of criticism from friends, possible danger from the perpetrator, or a range of other things. Without her consent, Farner said there was nothing the school could do, even though the student I reported admitted to saying something explicitly racist. Farner said that my friend was just as much a victim as I was. Our discussions led to no resolution and no punitive/substantive action. While I understand that my friend was a victim too, Gettysburg College failed to provide support, any kind of assistance, or ensure that I was okay. My interactions with Farner left me feeling like the system in place for the conduct process failed to adequately address the situation and ensure I was okay. There should have been some way that the school could have assisted me in the situation. Instead, I was left with the burden of handling the whole situation myself and relied on the help of my team and coach. My overall experience with the process was very disappointing because the administrators overseeing the conduct process said they would not be able to help me at all as a result of my friend’s unwillingness to give consent.
Following the conduct/bias office’s inaction, my teammates and I decided to pursue justice ourselves. So, in addition to classwork, basketball practice, the mental toll of understanding and grappling with racism, all while adjusting to college as a first-year, I tried to find people to speak with to support our effort to hold the student accountable. It took my teammates and me meeting with the students’ fraternity president and our coach speaking to the students’ athletic coach for any action to take place. All our effort resulted in an apology and a conversation within the students’ wrestling team about his actions.
My personal experience was definitely not the first and unfortunately won’t be the last, but there has to be a way the school can have a system in place to support students when something like this happens, and consent can’t be obtained from everyone involved. I was lucky to have my teammates there to support me and help me gain a sense of justice, but I feel like I cannot trust my school to protect me and my well-being.
Reflections & Takeaways:
The burden of accountability and justice was placed on Briscoe as a first-year student adjusting to environmental, academic, and personal changes while dealing with racism. Briscoe’s experience exemplifies the disproportionate burden placed on individuals who face discrimination, left to seek justice without the support of college administration. This experience mirrors the pattern that has left many students dissatisfied, disillusioned, and disheartened by the conduct process and college administration overall, regardless of whether they encountered the procedural conflict of consent. As articulated previously, since Briscoe’s experience, the bias and conduct processes have been separated. Despite the separation, the ineffective and unduly burdensome nature of both processes remains. Briscoe’s experience tells us the following:
- Open, unapologetic racism, especially being from a junior student, demonstrates the social and collegiate acceptance of racially discriminatory behavior at Gettysburg College. That an upperclassman student felt comfortable blatantly targeting a first-year student is indicative of social and administrative indifference toward racism. That he felt he would not receive punitive action from the administration, and he did not, shows administrative inaction toward—and tolerance of—his behavior.
- Briscoe, the reporting student, received no support, alternative forms of action, or substantive assistance despite meeting with the Director of Student Rights and Responsibilities. Students expect the administration to uphold their responsibility to protect them and help them when necessary. In this instance, the administration did not uphold this responsibility sufficiently.
- The reporting student was only aware of the conduct process because of an athletic team’s mandatory orientation. This demonstrates a gap in the education regarding conduct, bias, and racism that the entire student body receives.
- We are failing to create an environment that disincentivizes and prevents discrimination, adequately addresses racism, and provides adequate resources for students facing discrimination. Mental health resources are not enough. Students need substantive action that addresses, educates, acts against, and deters racism. We must cultivate an environment that is conducive to Gettysburg College’s values of “inclusive excellence”, in which we are “nurturing, respecting, and sustaining an inviting campus climate where individual differences and identities are perceived as strengths, not deficits,” a place where “everyone can live authentic lives without concern that this authenticity will negatively impact their opportunities for success” as articulated by our collegiate administration.
This article originally appeared on pages 14-15 of the April 2026 edition of The Gettysburgian magazine.
