CNU task force adds 4 members
NEWPORT NEWS — Four new members were named to the Christopher Newport University joint task force created to “research the decisions that determined the University’s location and growth and the city’s role in that development.”
CNU President Bill Kelly appointed Regina Brayboy and Vidal Dickerson. Brayboy is a CNU alumna, a member of the university’s Board of Visitors and chair of the President’s Council on Diversity and Inclusion. Dickerson is the university’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer.
Mayor Phillip Jones appointed City Council member Cleon Long and Joni Ivey, a community leader and retired chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott.
The city and university created the task force in January with Vice Mayor Curtis Bethany and CNU Provost Quentin Kidd as co-chairs.
The task force will research the decisions that led to placing the university in the Shoe Lane neighborhood, which was, at the time, a small, thriving Black community. In recent months, CNU has faced scrutiny over the history of its growth, which included taking land from Black residents in the 1960s through eminent domain. The renewed attention followed a series by ProPublica and the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO.
According to therelease announcing the new members, the university and city “seek to acknowledge the past, preserve the Shoe Lane neighborhood’s heritage and pave the way for informed and equitable strategies moving forward.”
Kelly and Jones’ formal charge for the task force states, “Your work has the potential to serve as a model for our Commonwealth and the nation at large for how institutions and cities can preserve and address the past while charting a path toward a just and inclusive future that includes the voices of all vested parties.”
The task force will provide recommendations. It will work with the community, CNU stakeholders and consult legal experts and historians.
When the group was established, officials also said “restorative justice experts” would also be consulted.