Spreading Culture Using Print

Camille Tuason Mata – Staff Writer

Janine Fondon is everywhere, raising awareness about multicultural issues in a variety of media outlets. Her specialty is diversity.  What immediately struck me about Ms. Fondon, CEO of Unity First Direct in the Forest Park district of Springfield, was her demeanor of strength and determination. Although this demeanor was easily disguised by her warm, easygoing personality, the story of her rise to the height of the media industry reveals tenacity not immediately palpable in her calm voice. As I talked with her at length about the early stages of her company, I soon understood that this was a woman with a mission.

Unity First Direct is a media corporation that focuses many of its diversity stories on the multicultural residents, businesses, and communities of the greater Springfield area. It began very humbly in 1996 in Framingham, the third largest city in the Bay State, at a time when neither minority stories nor social networking sites were very popular or even available. Framingham did not have a large African American population back then. Therefore, according to Ms. Fondon, not everyone could see her vision at first. She pursued seed capital from the usual business help groups, such as the SCORE Small Business Mentoring and Training and the Small Business Administration (SBA), to help her get started, but was met with skepticism. The absence of Facebook or Professional LinkedIn, social media networking sites where businesses advertise for free, did not exist in the 1990s as they do now.

Embarking on a diversity consultancy seemed to be the natural choice for Ms. Fondon when she lived in Framingham. A new baby imposed time demands on her. As she made progress in the diversity consulting world, she realized that many companies doing this type of work did not have a venue. Using virtually all her savings, she started a local paper called the MetroWest Minority News, which she co-founded with her husband, Tom, and began writing about diversity issues. Given the paucity of Black minorities and media outlets that produce responsible stories about the Black community, it was very innovative at the time.

Initially, Ms. Fondon featured African American community leaders and businesses in her news stories, but within two to three years her readership grew and she realized that she needed to expand into other realms of diversity in order to reach out to other ethnic and racial groups around Massachusetts, including their gender and differently-abled counterparts. In a career span of more than ten years, Ms. Fondon and  her husband transitioned MetroWest Minority News into a larger publication, called Unity First News Magazine, and combined both consulting and educational outreach into their company label, Unity First Direct, Incorporated. Over the years, she and Tom built on their company’s brand name across the Bay State and the United States to make Unity First News Magazine the leading publication on multicultural stories. The growth corresponded with a move to an office space on Sumner Avenue in Springfield, from where she currently operates. Together, she and Tom consult for a variety of corporate partners, influencing the way management teams approach diversity in their labor force and helping to shape internal company policies regarding their minority employees. She continues to write about diversity for Forbes Diversity Online and has collaborated with FORBES Magazine to publicize their special section on diversity.

The expansion of the Unity First Direct brand name also corresponded with feature articles in prestigious publications (Forbes, Fortune, Black Enterprise, and Entrepreneur) and magazines local to Massachusetts (Boston Business Journal, the Worcester Business Journal, and the Republican). Today, Ms. Fondon can be found on just about every popular diversity media. Her success story has earned her the “Spirit of the Entrepreneur” Award and she has been recognized for being one of the top 25 influential black female Corporate Executives of Industries across the United States, an honor that puts her in the ranks of other prominent African American executives that have included Tina Robinson, Senior Vice President of Union Bank. Recently, Ms. Fondon was placed on the “Black Women of Influence” list of all influential black female entrepreneurs across the United States.

Janine Fondon’s tireless effort to bring responsible news coverage of the African American community has resulted in a media circulation that has subsequently led to participation in notable international events. In 2007, she moderated a World Diversity Leadership panel on Asia and Australia at the United Nations in New York City. Her climb to the top could not have been possible without education and professional experience. She received her academic trainings in her home state of New York at Colgate (B.A.) and New York University (M.A.). Her creativity was no doubt nurtured at the Big Apple’s prestigious Music and Art High School. Before embarking on her independent consulting career, she cut her teeth in corporate management at the large conglomerates, BankBoston, Digital Equipment Corporation, and ABC-TV.

Despite the national success of Unity First Direct, Ms. Fondon has managed to stay focused on the local region. She has enjoyed growth among a wider circle of readers just in Hampshire County, alone. She fulfills speaking engagements, gives leadership trainings, and continues to consult for and build innovative leadership programs for a larger audience that includes the Latino and Caribbean communities. She collaborates with differently-abled communities to bring their brand of leadership to the community. She inspires minority women to pursue the near-impossible: to define your life and make your dreams happen. Finally, to celebrate minority leadership and cross-cultural communication, Unity First Direct coordinates events around the Pioneer Valley and Hampshire County. It sponsored two events this year, the Multicultural Awards Dinner and the Diversity Round Table, in Springfield on June 3rd and 4th, respectively. In her own words, Ms. Fondon describes her true calling in the world as one where she and Tom “hope to inspire communities and individuals to set high expectations, achieve their goals and be models of turning obstacles into opportunities”.

Culture of Violence in Higher Education?

By Camille Tuason Mata – Staff Writer

Chanting, staccato voices floated into the window of the trash room on the seventh floor of Cashin Dormitory. Below, a group of women barely visible beneath the dim street lights clapped their hands in unison in to their boisterous chants. What was going on? Oh, yes, another Take Back the Night rally, an event held periodically on university campuses across the United States to commemorate the scores of women who have been sexually assaulted or raped on college campuses.

Take Back the Night rallies were normal sightings at the University of Massachusetts more than ten years ago. They usually ended with a candlelight vigil on the lawn of the campus pond, with a few words given by organizers that gave sympathy to the frequency of campus assaults and rapes. As a University that prided itself on having feminist organizers, they  called for strengthening campus security programs with placements of emergency call boxes around the sprawling campus and a walking student security  that accompanied female co-eds to their campus destinations.

In celebration of April's Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the Center for Public Integrity ( a non-profit organization committed to investigating social issues on behalf of the public interest), invested a year into researching incidents of sexual violence on college campuses. Across the country and the procedural protocols guiding the way Universities responded to assailants proved that the judicial environment of many schools did little to curb sexual assaults and rapes. Kristen Lombardi, staff writer for the Center, reported that University administrators preferred to use educational means to address the perpetrators of sexual violence, such as writing a letter of apology or conducting research on sexual assault, rather than pursue criminal action. Under federal law, sexual assault and rape are criminal offenses.  Administrators tend to view criminal proceedings as oppositional to their overarching mission as educators and do not believe that prosecution is their responsibility. Lombardi expresses that the chasm between the University and civil jurisdictions in regards to sexual crimes merely created a college environment in which sexual violence offenders are reprimanded rather than held accountable for their actions. More often than not, victims make concessions. A victim at Indiana University, for instance, was pressured to transfer from IU in exchange for a harsher punishment for her assailant from the original one of a semester suspension. In Lombardi's assessment, leniency promotes repeat offenders. Department of Justice data and the research of Professor David Lisak at the University of Massachusetts Boston revealed that many perpetrators repeat their offenses and do so as many as an average of six times. Thus, it is safe to say that the judicial environment of Universities creates a culture of sexual violence in higher education that, one could argue, is nurtured. Security amenities alone are clearly not adequate to curb sexual violence.

Due to Title IX of the Education Amendments (1972), which secures one's right to attend school without the threat of violence, some institutions have implemented policies that now criminalize rape and sexual assault on campuses. However, this approach is not the norm. According to the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, disciplinary action more commonly applies to violations of drug and alcohol use and to bearing assault weapons on campus. Quite possibly, University administrators feel they do not have the training or knowledge to exercise criminal due process. Moreover, although the Clery Act (1990) requires Universities to collect data on sexual violence on their campuses, they are not required to report them and some still fail to be transparent. Instead, universities have enforced gag orders against the victims and often undergo civil proceedings behind tightly closed doors.

The contradictions underlying the politics of sexual violence echo many of the same observations reported by advocacy groups like the National Organization of Women (N.O.W). ten years ago. The secrecy that continues to surround judicial action against perpetrators exemplifies the failure of administrators to grasp exactly how to reform current systems.

Lombardi's assessment of 130 school databases between 2003 and 2008 reveals that the number of sexual violence incidents have been on the rise, a phenomenon she credits to both the Clery Act and to Department of Education grants. But, neither measure has teeth. They have merely created incentives to report incidents rather than to exercise proactive responses to reduce sexual violence. Many incidents even go unresolved. Between 1998 and 2008, out of 240 sexual assaults reported at New England schools only four assailants were expelled while only 24 cases were resolved. Why? Lombardi explained that because schools are rarely punished for violating Title IX they are not encouraged to accurately resolve sexual allegations.

The victims of sexual violence, unfortunately, are not given the same sensitivity that is usually extended to their perpetrators. Lombardi surveyed 152 crisis centers to discover that victims of sexual violence experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that ranged from disrupted sleep, inability to study at the same intensity before the assault, and being forced to transfer to another school out of fear of running into their assailants around campus. If the assault occurred without witnesses and involved drugs or alcohol, the victim’s character is brought into question. Victims sometimes feel that Administrators do not believe them because drunken sex is viewed as normal co-ed activity.

Women clearly have legal rights on college campuses, but what good are they without making perpetrators of sexual violence understand what constitutes consent? Counseling assailants would be another effective preventative measure to help reverse one’s penchant to violate. Undeniably, universities need to exercise more criminal justice muscle, which would mandate training for administrators on effective applications of due process against assailants and to better investigate sexual violence cases. Lenient punishments decriminalize sexual violence and render insignificant the trauma experienced by victims.