Diversity
Post by Francheska Vargas
What do you think? Question of the Day….
-What initiatives need to be made to make Allegheny College the ideally diverse community we have all talked so much about?
Recap:
During our first meeting the committee brain stormed what an ideally diverse Allegheny College Committee would look like:
-Advancement, development and retention are not predicted on the things listed above.
-Open to reassessment from a new voice and perspective.
-Seek, embrace and appreciate differences.
-Understand the value diversity.
-Supporting free action/speech but not tolerating hate action/speech.
-Fostering and strengthening an activist and advocacy tradition.
-Understanding, recognizing and challenging privilege
-Giving everybody a sense of belonging and a voice-making sure no one feel s unvalued or marginalized.
-Doing social justice elsewhere, everywhere, always; inviting it to campus.
-People of difference are here in substantive members.Today what we brainstormed initiatives that the college could commit to that would make these goals become a reality:
-Define for the AC community:
--diversity and social justice
--Why is diversity and social justice valuable
--What we are doing
--using a sustained and integrative communication plan
-Consistent assessment of diversity/social justice efforts and outcomes
-Diversify the power structure position by 2020?
-Develop educational models for all members of community on issues of diversity and social justice.
-Become a regional host for social justice colloquium for regional, colleges, HS, and community member.
-Recruit and retain a student body that is LARGE! ( We are trying not to get too specific)
-Dance, music, athletic---reflect, intentional and integrative diversity and social justice perspective.Then we had a representative from the Office of Diversity Affairs, come in and talk with us about the difference between diversity and social justice.
Hi-lights and Key points:
-Social Justice looks more at the individualistic recruitment and retention.
-Social Justice is more about identity and activism (no…not like a riot) ----it’s more than just awareness.
-You can have diversity without social justice but cannot have social justice without diversity.Tomorrow we plan on continuing the initiative brainstorm but would really like to hear your opinion so please help me answer the question of the day. Thank you. Talk to you tomorrow.
Comments (1)
This post is a mere soup of buzzwords. You're singing the praises of sane attitudes towards ethnicity, religious belief, etc. without giving more than an extremely vague sense of how you intend to promote them. How can we promote them? Well, I don't think there's any real doubt that Allegheny has the basics down, in the sense that no part of the college promotes or tolerates prejudice, and students and employees are treated fairly regardless of their sex or skin color. Such enlightenment may be unusual for rural Pennsylvania, but not for a liberal-arts college. There remains one uncomfortable truth about Allegheny: its students and teachers are overwhelmingly white.* Clearly this isn't ideal, but we ought to consider carefully whether it's our problem. The racial statistics of the people who apply to become students or professors at Allegheny reflect national trends that are outside of our control. Trying our darndest to attract applications from people of all races can only go so far. We could try affirmative action; we'd just have to be very careful to stay within the bounds set by Grutter v. Bollinger.
* You might also say that there aren't as many female professors as there ought to be. But for what it's worth, it appears to me that this disparity is much less extreme. I admit our community may be unduly homogeneous in other ways I haven't noticed; I'm not a very observant person in general.
Posted by Kodi Arfer '11 | May 22, 2009 11:13 AM
Posted on May 22, 2009 11:13