Diversity & Inclusion

February 7, 2023

In December, President Elmore sent you a vision for Dean College to get closer to being a model for living a pluralist ideal. We promised opportunities for continued discussions with each other, after our intersession break. As the Dean College Social Responsibility, Equity and Antiracism Work Team, we offer the following opportunities and hope your schedule will allow you to participate in a session:

Uprooted - The Journey of Jazz Dance
February 13, 2023
6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Marvin Chapel – second floor of Dean Hall

Uprooted - The Journey of Jazz Dance is a documentary that “celebrates the history, lineage, and future progressions of jazz dance. Commenting on political and social influences, it is an honest conversation addressing topics such as appropriation, racism, socialism, and sexism.”

Screening and Discussion with Professor Robin Gee.
Professor Gee is a commentator within the documentary Uprooted - The Journey of Jazz Dance and is a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker. She serves on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as an associate professor of dance in the UNCG College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The Pluralist Ideal at Dean
Open discussion sessions with President Elmore and members of the Dean College Social Responsibility, Equity and Antiracism Work Team.

One-hour discussion session on:
February 14, 2023
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Marvin Chapel

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
February 15, 2023
6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Marvin Chapel – second floor of Dean Hall

We will celebrate and reflect on the life and work of Bayard Rustin — a visionary activist and strategist described by TIME Magazine as “perhaps the most critical figure in the struggle for African-American dignity that many people have never heard of.” A disciple of Gandhi, a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Rustin dared to live as an openly gay man during the fiercely homophobic 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Through more than six decades as an activist, Rustin fought for racial and economic justice, peace, and equality for LGBTQ Americans. In 2013, Barack Obama awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom — America’s highest civilian honor — to Rustin, describing him as “an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all.”

We will host an evening Zoom salon in which Dean College President Kenneth Elmore will discuss Rustin’s life and legacy with two special guests: Walter Naegle, who was Rustin’s life partner; and Bennett Singer, a filmmaker who co-directed Brother Outsider – the award-winning film about Rustin. Clips from the documentary will be interspersed throughout the conversation, and the full film will be available to view throughout the month of February.

As President Elmore also mentioned, in December, the timbre of the times demands that we examine ourselves and understand – and own – our experiences, and that we engage facts critically and with rigor. We hope these sessions allow us to confront each other as human stories and to discover that we cannot move forward in isolation – together we must agitate, build, and create an honest place at Dean College, in this community and in the other places where we live, work, and socialize.

December 5, 2022

“That state of affairs which several distinct ethnic, religious, and racial communities live side by side, willing to affirm each other’s dignity, ready to benefit from each other’s experience, and quick to acknowledge each other’s contributions to the common welfare.”

From: “The American University and the Pluralist Ideal”

After participating in candid conversations and gathering other thoughtful input from many of you, I am encouraged that members of this community are invested in having an environment where pluralism is a common good at Dean College.

It is clear that societal stress manifests itself in campus conversations, classroom experiences, general interactions, and our activism, especially within discussions of racial justice, trans acknowledgement, queer dignity, ethnic and political violence, anti-Semitism and religious animus, and the treatment of the differently abled.

Observations

During discussions, I have learned that,

• often, other students – and occasionally, faculty and staff – are a source of exclusionary comments, behavior, and activities;
• there are communities of us that have little interaction with each other;
• many of you expressed a sincere desire for opportunities to get together with others; and,
• faculty and staff have voiced a desire to establish a sense of trust on addressing race and identity-related campus issues and concerns.

Let’s seize this momentum as an opportunity for learning by discovering each other and our humanity; fostering meaningful, authentic friendships; and expanding our individual and collective intellectual, social, and spiritual growth.

Importance of the Social Responsibility, Equity and Antiracism Work Team to Ongoing Efforts

The Dean College Social Responsibility, Equity and Antiracism Work Team was established to ensure an equitable and respectful campus environment for all students, faculty, and staff.

The work of this Team is to coordinate college-wide efforts to advise on critical issues of diversity and inclusion across our campus. It is still important that we see that the presence of this Team is meant to foster a collaborative and proactive approach to work with the campus environment to ensure that the Dean College mission is also true to addressing issues of race, ethnicity, and identity. 

The Team also must advise me and College leadership on how this community can best enhance the quality of campus life and help foster physical and psychological safety and security for all members of the Dean College community, including students and employees of color, and other underrepresented, nontraditional, and marginalized communities on campus.

A New Charge for the Work of the Social Responsibility, Equity and Antiracism Work Team

As a new charge, I ask the members of the Work Team to meet, throughout the year, and recommend programs, activities, strategies, policies, and procedures that facilitate cultural pluralism and address institutional systems of privilege, power and inequality.  Specifically, I ask the Team to focus on:

• programs and activities that support fear+less, and brave dialogues;
• faculty development and classroom learning;
• curriculum development;
• informal and co-curricular opportunities to strengthen our skills to interact with one another; and,
• gatherings or ways we get to know each other. 

I hope you will be active in giving suggestions to members of the Team and to assisting with planning and program implementation.

Finally, I am charging the Work Team to begin by examining structures, programs and systems that support of students in their exploration of who they are at Dean College, specifically by exploring the following questions:

1. Do we utilize more than just campus Black, Brown, and Queer faculty and staff to support and advocate for Black, Brown, and Queer student persistence and engagement?
2. Are we silencing specific student voices?  Do we marginalize certain students?
3. What is the satisfaction and retention of students based upon race, ethnicity, identity, and income
4. Are we bringing issues of race and gender-identity forward for dialogue and engagement?
5. Are we able to respond, recover and rebuild from slurs, vandalism, and other affronts to human dignity that find themselves on the campus?
6. What has been effective for educating students, faculty, and staff on issues of social justice and wider community participation and engagement? What innovations are possible?

I hope you will ask yourself these questions and discuss them with friends, classmates, co-workers, and members of the Work Team – here are its members:

Chairs

• Kristen Holster, Professor of Sociology, Program Coordinator of Social Sciences
• George Martin, Director of Athletics
• Jo-Ann Reid, Associate Professor of English

Members

• Ron Brown, Assistant Professor of Psychology
• Joseph Campbell, Assistant Director of Athletics, Men’s Soccer Head Coach
• David Drucker, Associate Vice President, Student Life and Dean of Students
• Gavin Estey ’08, Assistant Director of the Arch Learning Community; Student Success and Career Planning
• Brad Hastings, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts
• Erin Maher, Associate Director of Accessibility Services; Academic Coach, The Morton Family Learning Center
• David Rowell, Associate Professor, Program Coordinator Arts and Entertainment Management
• Edward Weston, Executive Director of Events and Executive Functions

Let’s always keep in mind that this is not a charge solely for the Work Team. It is a call to action for all of us.

The President’s Commitments

As president, I assume responsibility for the overall implementation of enhanced plans for inclusion and belonging.  In addition to being executive director of campus events and executive functions, Edward Weston will work with me on fostering this campus pluralism.  Edward will also work with the chairs of the Dean College Social Responsibility, Equity and Antiracism Work Team and will coordinate continual updates to relevant administrative action plans and activities. 

I am also a committed advocate for racial diversification of new faculty and staff and will continue to ask our vice president for academic affairs and the deans of the schools to work with me on antiracism curriculum, courses, and to address student reports of feeling as though they do not belong, unincluded, and unwelcomed in their learning environments.

Our Hopes and Dreams

The goal is to:

• focus on our intellectual and social development around issues involving ethnicity, culture, religion, race, and identity;
• embrace the cultures that we bring to Dean College; and,
• provide a welcoming community that draws on the College’s own diversity in the service of students and learning. 

We want to offer our students the opportunity to deal with difficult ideas and uncomfortable situations and build the confidence they need without sealing off large parts of the College, and the campus, to guard against certain ideas and viewpoints – students must be able to navigate the bonds that unite them as well as their disagreements.  We – faculty, staff, and students – must also respond and react, together, to uncomfortable and volatile words, promises, and behavior.

This is a vision for Dean College to get closer to being a model for living a pluralist ideal.  This is also a moment for continued discussion with each other.  I will arrange for community discussion sessions, after our intersession break, in January. I hope your schedule will allow you to participate in a session.

The timbre of the times demands that we examine ourselves and understand – and own – our experiences, and that we engage facts critically and with rigor.  I hope this allows us to confront each other as human stories and to discover that we cannot move forward in isolation – together we must agitate, build, and create an honest place at Dean College, in this community and in the other places where we live, work, and socialize.

The Work Team and I will be back in touch with updates.