Equity at Whittier: Let’s Talk About It
To kick off Black History Month, the Black Education Alliance hosted a summit starting on Monday, Jan. 9 and ending on Friday, Feb. 2, entitled “Building an Equity-Minded Culture.” This week-long event consisted of daily activities that sought to encourage discussions about equity, inclusion and diversity amongst the Whittier College community. For those unfamiliar with the term, “equity” (often confused with equality) refers to the acknowledgement that not everyone has the same economic or social starting point and some require different adjustments in order for them to have the same opportunities as everyone else.
On Tuesday, Jan. 30, the Summit hosted the “My Whittier experience, Equity Data “Discussion.” The event was moderated by Dr. Daniel Harris, a Bayard Rustin Fellow. Dr. Harris’s role on campus involves “[conducting] and presenting equity-based research at the College and [leading] faculty, student, and staff discussions on best practices in inclusive and equitable pedagogies for higher education.” He also leads the Black Education Alliance, which he states, “is really charged with engaging communities for students that are Black identifying; to educate a wider community on Blackness and Black education, and to ultimately address anti-Blackness on college campuses like Whittier.”
For this particular discussion, Dr. Harris created an interactive gallery walk to inspire conversation about the data being presented to the students in attendance. Around SLC 204, seven posters were hung, each showcasing statistics from a survey concerning students and their experience related to equity on the Whittier College campus. Attendees of the discussion were invited to pair up and spend five to seven minutes on a poster and discuss the statistics by relating their experiences or someone else’s comments on large, bright post-it notes.
“I’m not expecting you to come as an expert in this conversation,” said Dr. Harris before beginning the gallery walk, “but, I’m hoping that you would come with questions and curiosities around these data points.” He then released the students to grab a pen and begin the walk. Soft jazz played in the background to help mark the amount of time that students had at each poster. Once time was up, Dr. Harris would stop the music and ask the students to move on to the next poster on the right. The room buzzed with conversations as attendees helped each other interpret data and discuss it.
Since the activity was only allotted 40 minutes, students were only able to look at six of the seven posters. Dr. Harris then brought the group back together and asked what data points were most interesting to students. Students brought up a poster that discussed the effects of racial stress; it stated, “Despite representing only five percent of the total respondents, more than 32 percent of Black students indicate experiencing racial stress at least once in a while.” The poster then went on to explain that racial stress can often impact an individual’s mental health, contributing “to feelings of loneliness, isolation, and a lack of community.” One student related these statistics to watching a friend struggle with their mental health after experiencing microaggressions in the classroom.
Another poster referenced in the discussion resented data points in relation to “responses to racial encounters.” A bar graph showed that 38.5 percent of Black students felt a decline in their academic performance or grades due to an overall negative racial environment. A quote on the poster said, “Incidences of racist encounters are more likely to lead Black students to experience frustration (71 percent), while white students are more likely to be motivated to activism 41 percent).”
Another participant of the discussion said they related to this statistic because they often end up feeling disappointed and exhausted after a racist encounter. They expressed that it was difficult to feel inspired towards activism when microaggressions and stereotypes are a part of everyday life.
By the end of the discussion, Dr. Harris expressed excitement about the productive conversations the students had been engaging in. He hoped that this would inspire them to continue to have conversations about equity with the rest of the Whittier College community in less-curated environments. “Think of this as developing a muscle around curiosity and thinking about equity-based data.”
Photo Courtesy of Vistage.com
