Nursing Students Await Response to Their Concerns After Walkout

Senior nursing students remain unsatisfied after they were offered inadequate terms of reconciliation.

During their 9 a.m. class with Beatrice Adderly-Kelly, Ph.D. , the dean of the College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Allied Health Sciences (CPNAHS), they were offered the option to retake a Leadership and Management test next Thursday and given a study guide to accompany it.

The Interim Dean of Nursing and Co-coordinator of the Leadership and Management course, Mamie Montague, said she is not ready to comment on the situation until it develops.

“The exam is not the issue. The issue is that we want to be taught the right way and respected,” senior nursing major and class secretary Katia Toussaint-Coley said.

The students said that the administration is dodging the more pressing problems when the pertinent issues lie in classroom administration, protocol and interaction.

“They are not fixing our problem,” said LaTanya Blackwell, the senior class president and a nursing major. “They are putting a band-aid on metastasized cancer,” she added.

Students are disheartened with the program and the way they are treated regarding it.

“They are stripping me of my confidence,” said Atlantis Williams, a junior nursing major. Williams said the professors contradict the values of knowledge and confidence they should be instilling in their students as future nurses.

“Our spirits have been sucked out of us,” Toussaint-Coley said.

An additional meeting was held in which the juniors were invited to attend in an attempt to involve more students in the struggle against the department. A room full of seniors suggested and agreed that the juniors should transfer while they are able to.

“I feel like I’m at a downfall being at Howard,” junior nursing major Victoria Russell said. She works with the Washington, D.C. Student Nurse Association and is exposed to the nursing programs of nearby schools. Feelings of inadequacy and mediocrity arise for Russell and others when they interact with schools like the University of Maryland and the Catholic University of America.

Students said they believe they have no faculty advocate in their department.

“They hate the students. They do everything they can to demean us and destroy our morale,” Blackwell said.

Toussaint-Coley wants to know why the administration and professors do not want to see her and her peers succeed.

The students say their professors use scare tactics in order to subdue them by threatening individuals and their graduation.

“It’s like kids who misbehave. You just tap them and they go sit down, but this class is resilient,” said Manotte Etienne, a senior nursing major.

Students say professors attempt to disband their unity, but they insist on standing bound together.

“If you choose to be with them you will be exposed,” said LeSabre Bowens, class secretary and senior nursing major.

Students plan to pursue their initiative to see results until the end. They will write letters, continue to speak with proper administration and if necessary, take their issues to the provost.

On Thursday, March 1, the students walked out of an exam after issues regarding a previous exam were left unaddressed. Students said they felt poorly prepared due to their professor’s teaching style and the classroom’s inability to accommodate a 71-person class. Neither of the exams had been submitted for faculty peer review as stated by a new nursing division policy, according to the senior class executive board.

They are not only facing faculty issues, but also facility and equipment problems.

Students will be graduating this spring not knowing how to administer an IV because the department does not have the proper equipment to teach them.

The department has three small physical labs and one 14-computer technology lab to accommodate 417 nursing students.

Bowens said she would hate to see the country’s first black nursing program shut its doors, “but sometimes you have to destroy and rebuild,” she said.

Bowens says she can see why there is such a nursing shortage in the country. Two months from graduation, Blackwell questions whether she wants to go into nursing because of her experience at Howard.

“It concerns me that they will serve as my mentors when I move into the field,” Blackwell said.

Additional reporting by Campus Editor Drew Costley.