Twice each year, the Diversity Peer Program brings socially conscious students together to heighten awareness of issues centered around the relationship of power and privilege to class, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation and disabilities.
This term, two retreats were held due to the popularity of the DPP. They took place during the first and third weekends in January. There, student and faculty facilitators engaged 10 to 13 students in discussions of diversity on campus.
Alan Cheng '03, who is a former member of The Dartmouth staff, helped facilitate this year's retreats.
The program "brings together a very diverse group of students on campus," Cheng said.
He added that their different backgrounds help stimulate discussions in the retreat setting.
Students are encouraged to share information so that they may better understand diversity related concepts, become more self-aware by examining the way these concepts reflect their own biases and use the skills they develop to affect social change at Dartmouth and within the larger community.
Workshops are focused on all types of diversity, said Serena Chang '05, who also helped facilitate this year's retreats.
"We do a lot of activities to move beyond race and gender," Chang said, citing discussions of class, disability and sexual orientation.
When students leave the retreat, they are much more aware of diversity issues and better able to deal with them on campus, Cheng said.
Relating her own experience, Chang said the retreat changed a lot about how she perceived things in her own life.
This year, Advisor to Asian American students Nora Yasumura, Associate Dean of Pluralism and Leadership Tommy Lee Woon, Director of the Center for Women and Gender Giovanna Munafo, Director of the Native American Program Michael Hanitchak and Coordinator of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Programs Pam Misener helped facilitate workshops and discuss diversity.
Cheng recalls his first exposure to the program as very positive. He was impressed by the way students organized and conducted the workshops as well as by the administration's response to students' diversity concerns, he said.
Among the workshops at the retreat, Chang said the tables workshop was particularly effective. Tables are set up and labeled with cards for race, class, gender, disability and sexual orientation.
The facilitator reads out an incomplete statement. For example, she might say "I wish I knew more about ..." Students then sit at the table that completes the idea for them, sparking discussion, Chang said.
In addition to peer advisor training, the DPP tries to organize events to raise diversity issues on campus.
Among other endeavors, the DPP is extending its involvement in the Dartmouth community by training all freshman trip leaders in diversity awareness.
Trip leaders were asked to anticipate what assumptions they would make about the students on their trips and what assumptions those students might make about each other or Dartmouth as a way of practicing the resolution of diversity issues that might arise.
The DPP is currently working to create an educational program for Undergraduate Advisors about dealing with diversity issues among their residents.
They have also sponsored multiple discussions on hate crimes and bias incidents, including one this Thursday at 6 p.m. in Collis Commonground.
"You might not feel you are biased. You may not have been a victim of a hate crime, but it is an issue that affects everyone," Chang said of the upcoming program, inviting students from across the campus to attend.
