Are you a fan of critical dialogue and challenging discourse? Have you ever considered the impact that diversity, equity, and inclusion has on the various professional fields? Then consider no more! The Chopping BLOCK is the #1 web-based interview series that features some of the world's leading DEI practitioners, educators, advocates, allies, and stewards. Hosted by our CEO and Founder, Sherard Robbins.
Daymyen Layne is the Director of Multicultural Education and Training at Quinnipiac University. Housed in the Department of Cultural and Global Engagement, Daymyen is responsible for executing key initiatives and programming in alignment with the inclusive excellence pillar outlined in Quinnipiac's strategic plan. This includes but is not limited to developing competency-based training and workshops surrounding topical areas related to diversity, inclusion, and social identity development, and fostering multicultural awareness and cross-cultural interaction among students, faculty, and staff. Additionally, he develops goals and assesses the effectiveness of programs sponsored by the university's Department of Cultural and Global Engagement.
In this episode, "D-Layne" enters the Chopping BLOCK to talk about issues of race, family, Brotherhood, mentorship, and calming in a time of crisis.
DL: How y'all doing out there? I'm Daymyen Layne and I'm on the Chopping BLOCK at visceralchange.org.
SR: How's everybody doing, we're back! A new episode of The Chopping BLOCK. I'm here with my brother, my family, mentor, friend, one of the men in my wedding, one of the groom, Daymyen Tyler Layne. D. Layne, what's goin' on, man?
DL: Yes, sir, I'm doing well, man, you know, trying to gear up for the fall, whatever it's going to look like.
SR: Yeah, man, out there in institutions of higher education has been super interesting seeing how they've developed during COVID. Have y'all seen some serious troubles or nothing crazy?
DL: So Connecticut's actually been pretty good. You know, I'm at Quinnipiac University and we're in Connecticut right here. Not too far from Yale, Yale's right in New Haven, Quinnipiac's in Hamden, a town next door. And between all the issues that New York had, and you're from New England, so, you know, you can drive through five states in one day or Texas, right. Or you're in one state driving for 20 hours. So between New York and all the issues that they've had, where everyone lives on top of each other, I'm a New York native, so I know how that is. Right. There's literally nothing you can do wherever you go. There are droves and droves of people. Connecticut, you have a little bit more space, a little bit more spaced out. So, we haven't had too many issues up here, but, obviously, you know, we're dealing with it just like everybody else's with people, people trying to get tested and the state is trying to figure out what that means to reopen back in phases and right now we're in phase three. And then on the other side of us, you have Massachusetts, right? Who's dealing with some of the same, but, but you know, the city of Boston and the city of New York, I've lived in both for equal amounts of time, almost at least 11 years in Boston, in 14 years in New York. And Boston you do have a little bit more breathing room, right? You just don't have the massive amounts of people in New York. It's still a large city obviously, but in a large metropolitan area, but you just don't have where everybody's on top of each other in New York. So New York had its own set of issues. Boston had their own set of issues and Connecticut somehow stayed out of the fray.
SR: Which is interesting. I see. It's like, there's the gray sort of blot on the map or at least pretty consistent in terms of covert. Yeah, man. That's interesting, man. Well, I know I am. I know that people are looking forward to hearing a little bit more about you and what you do. You know, I know you, man. I know you well, you know me well, you know, and I can probably, I can comfortably say at least from my perspective that your trajectory has been unlike anything I've seen in terms of higher ed professionals, you know, you’ve gone from Operations to Res Life as an Assistant Director to a Director of Residential Education at massive research, one institution, you know, to now multicultural engagement. I mean, tell me about that journey and what you've learned to be some of the similarities and the differences that sort of got you to where you are or that sort of manifest.
DL: Yeah, for sure. My journey, as you said, hasn't been the typical journey for anyone that deals specifically with equity and inclusion or multiculturalism or anything like that. But I was planting seeds along the way. Right. And I had to do that with my extra time. I had to do that sort of on my own personal journey just because of the identities of Apple. Right. So yeah, as you said, man, I kinda cut my teeth and got my chops through residence life. You know, I started out in the operation side where I found myself at Boston College building this graduate housing program where it was the first of its kind, it was all off campus. BC had never done this before. But it allowed me the opportunity to build sort of the co-curricular programs as well. So it was an interesting experience, you know, you had all the operations pieces where you're managing this real estate portfolio off campus. So, you know, I'm cutting my teeth in business, but I'm also cutting my teeth in the business of managing people. And that's how I look at sort of student affairs or residence life. I always looked at it as the business of managing people. And we know, you know, in, when we talk about multiplicity or multiculturalism, we always talk about or diversity, whatever you want to call it. Right. You always talk about different identities and how they meld together. And that was something that I had to do, right? So that was a constant string. Then I went to Salem state, which is a much smaller midsize public institution. And I did that purposefully, right. And I'll mention purpose of a couple of times. I did that purposefully because what I found at Boston College was the certain string of socioeconomic that kept rearing its ugly head. And I actually found it getting in the way of student development in certain ways. So with my background, you know, raised by a single mother in New York city, I'm one of seven children, you know I purposely wanted to work with a different demographic of student where folks were coming from tougher socioeconomic backgrounds. And you found some of those students at Boston college, but you know, the typical student, if you had a cookie cutter student that went to Boston College, it was, you know, came from an affluent background, small town, what have you, or a large city, but very affluent family which at Salem State, and we both did our grad work there. I think, you know, you come across nontraditional students all the time. So I wanted to work with a little bit of knob of a nontraditional student, and I was still in operations at that point, you know, but with the information that I was able to grab at FBC and the experience that I was able to grab, not only with with operations, but, technologically, right. I always talk about equity and access, and there's no greater way to do that than through technology. So I was able to build Boston College's first online housing program. And then I was able to build Salem State's first online housing program. Look working with a third party company that had the software, but I would bring it in, you know, tailor it to the needs of the university. So another interesting experience, but I was also creating equity and access for students now all the way I talked about planting seeds. So at Boston college, I'm doing work with the multicultural office, working with their maze mentoring program where we would take a student from their freshman year all the way through their senior year. Right. And we would pair them up with a faculty and staff mentors. And we would pretty much, handhold these students throughout their entire transition of the four or five years, however long it took them to finish undergrad, so transferable skills that I've taken throughout my journey. Right. You know, being on the operation side, a lot of people forget that universities, colleges, and universities, it's a big business as well. So I talked about a little bit about the business of managing people and that's where the operations piece comes in. So my ability to sort of understand bottom lines, to understand budgets, to understand, you know, the numbers behind resources and where they go. And most people talk about equity and inclusion on campus as an unfunded mandate. So we're in the process of building a wellness center, but within that space, you can't build a wellness center with a university that's named Quinnipiac University without thinking about a land acknowledgement statement, right. For the Quinnipiac people, and the land that the college is built on. So, I find myself sort of merging all of these different experiences with the understanding of how a college works or how our university works from, you know, the budget aspect, the people aspect, the physical aspects as well. And just trying to merge all of those together to make the biggest impact in students' lives and, you know, to try to help along the ways in which faculty and staff interact, engage and try to lead students.
SR: Oh man. Yeah. And you offered it, you offered a ton there, man. But one of the things that always sticks with me just from knowing you in the past and to present is, you know, you've always referred to student affairs as the business of managing people. Man, I use that as well because that's always stuck with me because that's really what it is. And, you know, I remember when I was flirting between dissertation topics, one thing I was thinking about was this idea of as good until it works with respect to diversity and inclusion, whether it's the chief diversity officer position or just to speak to the roles and the expectations of that role in general. I mean, people love it until it's actually working. And then it's like, wait a minute. I'm not quite sure what we can invest in this. So you mentioned Boston College. I'm not quite sure what those demographics are. But I want to talk a little bit about demographics of blackness though, on some other institutions and locations. I mean, so we know Oneonta sort of full 0.6% black Salem mass, but 5.2% black, Tucson's 5% black. I'm sure Boston College isn't much greater than that. So you touched a little bit about this, but talk about how your experience in these predominantly white institutions and settings has prepared you for your role now as a director where Quinnipiac black population is only 4.1, 2%.
DL: Yeah. And, and I think this is the crux that every black person in student affairs has to manage at some point, right. Or the cross that I think we have to bear without getting too religious. You know, we're thinking about our own experiences and what happened to us on campus, how we decided to go to college, or if we come from a first-generation family or what have you, right. We take that and we internalize it. And then we either, we either love our experience or we're somewhere in the middle, or we despise it, but we always want to change it in some, in some capacity for, for students that might be in our shoes. So I think that's what drives me. Right. You know, I've seen these students at Boston College and if you talk about scale, right, if you look at a small private, or if you look at a large private, right. If you talk about scale, it all scales up, right. You would find the same issues on campus in terms of diversity, in terms of mismanagement of issues once things happen nationally, right. And I'm talking about from senior leadership to where they either decide to speak out, and a lot of presidents are, are symbolic leaders, right? Like you become pretty much the mayor of a small town almost. So the mismanagement of different issues is the same, just the scale of different. It’s literally just in my experience as literally just a matter of if you're in the paper or not. Right. How leadership sometimes pushes folks from marginalized backgrounds towards marginalized issues on campus. I think that's the same, right? So if you keep seeing the same issues, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what sector you're in, right. If you're in large private, large public research one, and the demographics are really what's driving this. Right. And we all know about the Browning of America, which is this impending rolling of numbers to where the dominant group won't be the dominant group for much longer, so right. In America or in higher education. So, you know, I found myself in places where I'm trying to make sure universities are better prepared for this to manage student experience, right. If I can change. And I had to scale it down for myself in terms of expectations of how much I can change on campus. Which was something I think was interesting for my career. It was almost like this awakening to where I'm like, I always saw myself when I'm getting promotions, right. I'm like, okay, now I'm an assistant director. I'll be able to manage this, this and this policy. Okay. Now, well, I skip the associate director piece. Now I'm a director. I'll be able to effect all of these policies and I get to manage a staff of 30 with 600 students. And I'll be able to directly affect what policies are in place. Right. But what I always found was that things roll downhill. So if you don't have leadership at the top thinking about inclusion or thinking about inclusive practice or the journey to it, right. Then it doesn't matter how much you affect those practices because you'll always run into roadblocks. That's right. So across all of those experiences, you know, I just found myself in a place where I wanted to change that student experience for students, but where it was a little bit different than what I experienced on campus, or they had just another resource to go to, um, on campus. So, you know, throughout our careers, I think we have to figure out what drives us, what our purpose is, what wakes you up in the morning and try to work within that and then try to create as much change as possible from there.
SR: Sure. That's profound. I mean, there's no question about it. And, you know, as someone, himself who has been multiple times, the only black body in a majority white space, whether that is just a meeting or a sort of a large gathering, or maybe in some cases, the entire department, you know, it is difficult. And, we are shaped by some of those past experiences. And those PWI (predominately White institutions) that have taught us, you know, as we used to talk about how being Black becomes a life skill and that life skill is what allows us to be able to navigate places from Oneonta to I'm guessing maybe Quinnipiac new situation. So stick on with this theme of being, no, go ahead, go ahead, chairman.
DL: I was going to say, not only a life skill, but it's a vital skill in the same, but we've talked about this in the past to where, you know, that becomes a certain skill set of survival. And I think about that, that notion of being the only Black body in a White space or the meeting after the meeting, right. Where it's just me and you in a room, we were like, hey, you got two minutes to reconnect with somebody who shares that identity with you. And you just try to recharge a little bit before you go back into that White space. So it's interesting. Yeah.
SR: That's huge, man. The meeting after the meeting is very real sticking with the idea of being shaped, right? We all know the Lang family is deep and Stan is seven kids, right. That many kids, man, talk to us about how that experience now has saved the man you are right. The character and your outlook on life.
DL: Interesting, you know, growing up my mom well before the golden state warrior has this trend, this notion of strength in numbers. So what I talk about in my work a lot is this idea of a critical mass of trying to build that within your space. And this becomes sort of another one of those survival sort of practices to where not only for students, right where they start rolling up to this critical mass and students become a part of collegiate recruitment to where, you know, they're engaging in admission stairs and things like that to where they're trying to pull in other students of color. But for faculty and staff as well, right? Like you try to build this little bit of critical mass where you can feel safe, not just physically safe, you know, a lot of times when we talk about safety is mental as well. That's right. So this notion of being the only one we tried to do away with that. A lot of my work tries to try this to center this idea of trying to build a critical mass. And I preach this to students. I preach it to faculty, I preach it to staff. And I, again, a lot of that has to come from leadership. But when you talk about ownership of your experience, when you talk about if your experience is happening to you or if you're happening to it. And manifestation wise a lot of these students don't understand that they can create some of what their experiences at these pre PWS. For instance, you know, when I was in, at Hartwick college, we brought the first, historically Black fraternity on campus. I notify feta organization, you know, incorporate no. So I stayed on campus and I was one of the founding members of that line 20 years ago now. But you know, experiences like that, you know, further, let me know that we have ultimate control over what our experience is like on these campuses. And we don't have to leave it up to senior leadership because I didn't go to the president. I could have Richard Detwiler at the time, was his, what was his name? I could have went to the president. I had that sort of relationship with him that, you know, I could have at smaller schools. Sometimes you have twhere I could have asked him, how do we go about this? Like, what can you do? No, we set it up. We brought to campus whether they liked it or not, it was happening. Right. And then you learn to work with administration and you get all the paperwork. Right. And whatever, but it was, it was a rolling before, but, you know, before they came to the table. So, a lot of what I talk about is ownership, no ownership over your own.
SR: Right. And I'm guessing, you know, knowing the Layne squad that ones at peace with him and then sort of that’s all on yourself on your moments. Yeah.
DL: Yeah. Ownership of your experience, that strength, the numbers, my mom sort of ingrained that in us. You know, I, the women in my household are all older as well. I come from a very matriarchal household and I'm talking liberal, you know, there was my grandmother, my mom, my three sisters, and then the four boys. Respect for women was always there which made me think about, you know, how I carry myself in this world, how I work within my own identity, the certain male privilege that I have in the U.S. and how that affects different rooms that I'm in. You walk with it every day. I don't think a lot of people think about, well, maybe they do a lot. I don't think a lot of people think about sort of family values or what was ingrained in them as they're growing up. Some people just move through the world as they naturally would because they can, another one of those life skills, man, it's just striking up critical mass strength in numbers.
SR: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I do. I absolutely do. I mean, I come from a, so my numbers, just one side of yours, you know, I come from a, a six-member family, the kids. And so, you know, you talked about, you know, instilling some of that critical mass and understanding the importance of owning oneself. I mean, that's exactly what I was sharing my experience to be as well. You know, when it came to my grandfather has always said, you know, my name's on it. I'm never going 50%. You know, we don't go halfway if my name's on it, we're going in. You know? So, all that comes from that experience we have as kids, men are really looking up to those who hold those important figures in our lives, especially in the immediate family. I want to dig in a little bit for our last few questions here. Here we are again, man, you know what I mean? You and I were together at Salem, as we kind of talked about during Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, we were together in Tucson for Charlottesville, you know, so I know better than most sort of the impact that the taking of Black lives has on our Black students, our Black staffs and our bBlack faculty, especially as spaces where they are not the majority, you know, and more than that, man, I know how important that is to you in your roles and how much you take responsibility for each individual, each person's individual feeling about it being the empath that you are for sure. How have you responded? And I don't necessarily mean you specifically, but how have you and your role be able to respond to the deaths of George Floyd, Briana Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and how do you think it's been received?
DL: So I think you know, first and foremost, I think we'd be remiss to say this hasn't been difficult, right? I think every time we come to these, these flashpoint moments in history to where you see something happened like a George Floyd or Briana Taylor, and the list goes on, right. A man while he was going out for a run it becomes difficult in terms of the process on your own. Then you feel this grave responsibility, right. As a, I don't know if you would call it survivor's remorse. Right. My undergrad's in psychology. So I always go back to these psychological explanations, what you feel is grave responsibility to like either at, or make sure people are okay. You mentioned the empathy piece and I try to lead with empathy every day. Like that that's another one of my driving forces. So I feel like I feel it a little bit deeper than, than the normal Joe Schmo, but trying to operate in spaces where folks don't hold that identity in the majority, you know, folks will call a meeting the next day and they'll just go about their business. Nothing like these Black death and the Black body aren't being strewn all across the tube or phones or computers, whatever device we open up. And that's, you know, that's one thing that this generation has to deal with that previous generations. Didn't right. It took a while for you to hear that something happened, or you had to read a paper a couple of days later, or what have you right now, as soon as something is blasted across the web, it's on your feed, 30 different places. How, however, any networks instantly. So, you know, I think we all deal with vicarious trauma. I've tried to manage that myself with a little bit, I've started to meditate, you know, with either or the calm app or the breathe app, a phone, but I found myself waking up in almost panic states where my heart was pounding. I couldn't really breathe. Right. And I'm not trying to be metaphorical there. I was having heart palpitations, you know, and I couldn't understand why, but this kept happening and kept happening. And I started doing this three, five, three breathing technique that really helped me kind of calm down. I sort of call them my body to function and manage, you know, because you have all this energy that you can't do anything with. So, how I put that into the work or how I've tried to respond to that, man, I've tried to create healing space for folks. Right. So every Friday at five o'clock what started was this check-in for me to check in with Black males or it started as a check in to check in about Colby. Hey, you know, we just shut down in March, right, right around the middle of March. Everybody had to go home, couldn't come back from spring break. Just want to know how you guys are doing. And then at the end of that first call, right. I mean, obviously we had talked about a mod at the dirt during that first call and I don't think George Floyd had happened yet. I asked, Hey, do you guys want to do this biweekly? Like, you guys want to have another check in in a month, like, let me know. And they're like, we're home. You know, it's just us enough school or we're not doing anything and everybody's in quarantine. How about weekly? Okay. Alright. So it's been a steady stream, man, since March every Friday at five, I'll get cat's on the call and I'll talk in like current undergrads people who have just graduated, who are no longer. They checked back in just to see how folks are doing. You got some folks who had, COVID some folks who are going to protest in New York. Um, so the conversation goes all over, man.
SR: That's huge. That's huge, man, because, you know, I think about the brotherhood days, man, and you know, we had everybody there, undergrad grads, faculty, staff, tenured, professors that matter and folks were engaged and receiving the discussion as if, you know, we all went through the same thing at the same time and you know, nobody was pulling rank. There was no elitist. Nobody was trying to teach. No one was trying to preach. It was just, I don't know if you remember this. We also had the high school students as well.
DL: Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So you saw it from another level to where, you know, the stuff that we were doing, the cats on campus started doing in real time. One of the most mind blowing things as well, man, but I've just tried to create space for healing, not only for myself, but for, for other other folks as well.
SR: That's huge, man. That's I actually want to jump off that a little bit, man. I'm all about leaving legacies. I mean, I'm all about trying to make sure I can institute something that is going to have an impact, man. And that really affirms and solidifies my hire or, you know, my contract and my personhood in my commitment to the work. So why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about some of the broader initiatives that you've been able to create in such a short time, or if you have some others that are on the horizon, you started talking about quotes a little bit, so maybe that's one of them, but some of the things that maybe you have cooking in the kitchen.
DL: Yeah. So you had talked about you had talked about mentoring a little while ago and that's something that we take the art, we have this program again with the acronym, excuse me, we have this program called quest Quinnipiac university, enriching student transition. Quest mentoring program, that's in effect first year, students they're paired up with either juniors, sophomores, or juniors on campus. And these are all either first gen or students of color or international students, um, anyone from marginalized backgrounds. Then we have another layer to that where it's a faculty and staff. But what we're trying to build in this sort of alignment of experience, right? With Quest specifically to where we're trying to build a cohort model of mentors, if you will. So as they're going through their program and with their mentees, you know, we'll have faculty and staff engagement with the cohort of mentors this year, we have 20 on campus. It's a pretty good crew, man. People enjoy it. People find fun, find the gems where they will. But this alignment, it also works with other programs. So this year we're piloting our first sort of summer bridge program called QUFYI (first year immersion). Um, and the QUFYI program is supposed to be a two week residential to where folks come back early and they get their feet wet on campus. They're connected the resources they're jacked in with the quest mentors earlier. Right. So, you go through FYI, hopefully you would come back and be a quest mentor. You kind of move on. We're also building in a living learning community which is culturally based housing. And that sort of come into fruition this year. We're operating in a space in conjunction with the global living LLC that's on campus which has some, some roots in international service learning, some roots with exposing students to different cultures and different international students across the world. We've got a lot going on, man. This training piece is the largest piece right now. With everything that's going on with uprisings across the country, I think everybody's operating off of the fierce urgency of now and everybody wants to do something right now. That's right. I think a lot of colleagues operating off of white guilt and some of them need to back off of that. But it's a double-edged sword because on the one hand, you have that on the other hand, you have this energy where, where people are treating my office, like the consultant type of office that they should, right. They're reaching out before they put out, um, before they put out a document or they're reaching out before they put on a program or they're reaching out, you know, before they institute a policy right now. And you did some work with us in the past right now we're working on sort of a first amendment or protest and policy, right. Because he has never had this in the past. So, you know, I brought this to our student conduct folks and actually our Greek life folks were involved in that as well, because the question kept coming up of what do we do if, and when students program already pops about students don't want to walk out, you know, at Syracuse, you saw students occupy a building. What happened if we do that? Like how does university police respond? So speaking to university police we're building a relationship with them as well to where it's not like the flash in the pan one-off training, but we have sort of this long term plotted out an experience that officers can go through where we cultivate conversations and different experiences for them, you know, to intentionally teach them about different ideologies of power and privilege right off-campus. There's a lot going on, man, you know, and right now with everything that's going on across the world, it's like every day somebody wants to do something else, but at some point, we're going to have to, we're going to have to figure out resources and funding because my office is an office of three people.
SR: Yeah, man. I mean, that's some legitimate workman and the work's not easy. And then you talk about, you know, provide a space for young men of color and providing the space for Black men in particular. And it just, it makes me think about, you know, the barbershop and we both have had experience with work like that. And, you know, I know you've been able to champion that. Have you seen the fruits of that, you know, in any way, like, has that stuck with you since San Jose State?
DL: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm at Quinnipiac, we're actually building it, building the barbershop talks. It's called, The Cut. So we're efficiently branding that we're producing it full out with marketing as a show. We have the first three pilot episodes already shot. They're cutting that up. And I'm talking about, we have five cameras going. We had a camera that was panning the whole time. It was a crazy kind of shoot. And they were hyped about it when I brought the idea during my interview, but to see what it, what it turned into and you got the opening short with like the flow motion of the barber flipping the cape, and like, I'll actually send you some early footage, man. But in the next coming weeks, I don't think you see me until like episode three in conjunction with my VP of equity and inclusion. I want him to get in there for the first two episodes, one to open us to the second episode we focused on. We focus a lot on a hip hop class at Quinnipiac, the sociology of hip hop. So I definitely wanted him in there. And we have students that we talk to and the barber man cats is getting cut up in the chair. And it's fantastic, man. So, it's gonna grow from here where we're already in talks about the next shoe. You know, and it's just all about creating that space for students. We all know that the barbershop is a staple in the black community and it's a piece of therapy for black men. It's been fantastic, man.
SR: That's going to be crazy, man. I'm super in for that, especially the direction you're taking it. You know, I remember, you know, cause that was profound at Salem, you know, and I remember I was able to do a little something at UNC that found its way to a recording, but nothing at all. Like, I don't think like what you're saying here with Quinnipiac and.
DL: Oh yeah, this is going to be miked up. Yeah.
SR: I need the Director's Cut, man! So yo, thank you for being here on the Chopping BLOCK D. Layne, before we let you go, man. Tell us what people can get in touch with you, man. Do you have any hashtags any @'s, any publications, any podcasts, where can we get in touch with you?
DL: No podcasts yet, but that will be coming. The Layne Change Podcast. You can find me on Instagram @DLayne6, I'm number six or seven in the family, that's where the 6 comes from. You can find me on Twitter @DLayne6, as well. You can find me on Facebook if you can find me.
SR: Okay. I'm right there, fam. Aye! Thank you so much for being here, man, ladies, and gentlemen, my friends, my family, everybody out there. Daymyen Layne, Sherard Robbins, with the Chopping BLOCK@visceralchange.org.