Approximately 21 percent of Dartmouth’s community members have personally experienced exclusionary, offensive or hostile conduct in the past, according to results released last week from the fall campus climate study.
A total of 781 undergraduate students, 336 graduate students, 25 post-doctorate or research assistants, 368 faculty and 1,243 staff members participated in the survey.
Based on the results, gender non-conforming survey respondents experience more hostile conduct compared to women and men, while participants of color and multiracial participants experience more hostile conduct than their white counterparts. Respondents of color also indicated that they believed the hostile conduct was based on their ethnicity.
The study, conducted last October, is the College’s first-ever extensive community study examining campus climate. A working group of faculty, staff and students organized the study and contracted Rankin and Associates, a consulting firm, to help analyze collected data. The study was initially announced as a part of College President Phil Hanlon’s “Moving Dartmouth Forward” policy initiative.
In the winter, the College formed three working groups to pursue conversations on diversity and inclusion with input from students, faculty and staff. Dean of the College Rebecca Biron and vice provost for student affairs Inge-Lise Ameer chaired the student working group; vice provost for academic initiatives Denise Anthony chaired the faculty working group. Ahmed Mohammed, director of talent acquisition in human resources chaired the staff working group.
Recommendations from these working groups were released to the College community last week in an email, as well as on the College’s diversity webpage.
The student working group’s proposals focused on themes of accountability, transparency and communication, and included several initiatives designed to increase diversity and inclusion at the College.
The group proposed that the College president and provost produce an annual College diversity and inclusion report. Moreover, it recommended a public assignment of each current or new diversity initiative to a particular College community member, who will be held accountable for its execution. Other proposals included hosting termly town halls and housing community meetings focused on diversity and inclusion, the addition of a diversity course requirement for all undergraduates and introducing incentives for faculty to undergo diversity training.
Meanwhile, the faculty working group focused its suggestions on areas of institutional infrastructure, pipeline and recruitment, professional development, retention and inclusive community and research.
Some of the proposals included assigning an academic dean in each school to support diversity and inclusion actions, incorporating diversity-related activities into annual faculty evaluation, increasing the Faculty Diversity Recruitment Fund and investing in formal mentoring programs for every department.
The staff working group addressed issues in institutional culture, current staff support, recruitment and retention and measurements.
Recommendations include the introduction of cultural sensitivity training, increased support and funding for Employee Resource Networks and instituting exit and “stay” interviews to analyze why staff are leaving or staying at the College.
Evelynn Ellis, vice president for institutional diversity and equity, said that the purpose of hiring outside experts to help with data analysis was to make the results more credible and objective to the community.
Nineteen focus groups were formed in the spring of 2015 to identify themes relevant to the Dartmouth community. The study’s survey questions were formulated based on these themes.
Ellis said the study is important because it the data is not anecdotal. She added that the results give the administration authority to support the energy, human resources and financial resources put into diversity initiatives.
Justin Maffett ’16, a member of the student diversity working group, principally devoted his efforts to a section about communication between students and administration.
Biron and Ameer revised individual pieces from subgroups of the student group, each focused on specific topics, editing individual contributions to varying degrees.
Given the results of the community study and the recommendations by the working groups, an executive committee composed of executive vice president Rick Mills, Hanlon, Provost Carolyn Dever and Ellis will publish a plan for implementing measures to address the issues brought up by the study and groups.
Ellis said that the committee set itself an end-of-May deadline, in order to have the plan ready for public viewing before finals period begins.
This month, the College will host a series of community forums. The first of these forums, co-hosted by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People campus chapter, was held on Monday evening and attended by 32 members of the College community. Anthony, Ameer, Mills and director of the Office of Pluralism and Leadership Reese Kelly served as panelists.
While the study results at the College are consistent with those of other universities in terms of discomfort levels on campus, Anthony said that “finding we are consistent with other institutions should not be satisfying to us.”
When one attendee asked about how the administration plans on retaining female faculty of color, Anthony responded that the tenure process operates independently of the working groups.
In response to why there were no community survey questions on how students feel about faculty diversity and retention, Mills said the administration already recognizes these topics as a problem, and that they do not need to know the specifics.
“You don’t need to know the temperature of the fire to deal with the fire,” he said.
At a town hall on Wednesday attended by over 250 where administrators again fielded questions related to the community study, Anthony discussed more specific findings, including many of the statistics.
Maffett said that the open community forums mark the start of a review process, during which all the results and findings are available for public scrutiny.
“All eyes are on the executive committee and everyone expects them to come back with an action plan,” he said. “We hope they take seriously our recommendations and work to enact them.”
Ellis said there will be some short-term measures that can be implemented almost immediately, while mid-term measures will require the administration to utilize existing resources and subsequently update the community. Long-term measures include changing the curriculum, a vote on which occurred on Monday, Ellis said.
“Even though that’s a long term measure, the first action already occurred,” she said. “Long term, you can never stop.”
Maffett said that some of the challenges for the executive committee’s implementation will be getting some of the changes past the faculty and the faculty committees.
“The dean of the faculty was not involved at any point during this process, which I thought was surprising, since [many of the recommendations] will require a lot of participation from faculty,” Maffett said, adding that while this should not be a barrier, it is still a process through which many recommendations will have to go.
The three working groups studied the College’s past and existing initiatives to promote diversity and inclusivity and merged their findings with other original ideas.
He added that from reading reports dating back to as far as 1965, the group noticed that many past ideas have been half-implemented already. While the report by the student working group “is definitely a nod to what has already been said, there are still some original ideas,” Maffett said.
He said that it is necessary for the administration to have an aggressive response to the needs of students, faculty and staff in terms of diversity and inclusion, adding that anything less than that will create a strong reaction from community members “who sincerely believe that real change is necessary right now.”
Ellis said that to increase transparency and accountability, the executive committee will probably create a website with a checklist of goals.
Ellis said that the creation of an online dashboard can also help administrators address other communication issues, such as why there are community members who often do not know about programs at the College that help with diversity and inclusion.
There needs to be an update at least once a year on how implementation of the recommendations are going, she said, adding that community forums should also be continued and hosted periodically.
“Sometimes people are angry because they haven’t had the opportunity to voice their concerns,” Ellis said. “They don’t want to just write in, they want a human they can look at and talk to.”
The next community forum will be held on May 17 at 6 p.m. in Rockefeller 002, co-hosted by thePalaeopitus Senior Society. Two more will be held on May 24 in Collis Common Ground, one at 8 a.m. and another at 1 p.m.
Correction appended (May 13, 2016):
The original version of this article did not identify the senior society hosting the May 17 community forum. The senior society is Palaeopitus.
Sonia is a junior from Ottawa, Canada. (That is the mysterious Canadian capital that no one seems to ever have heard of.) She is a double major in Economics and Government, with a minor in French. She decided to join The D’s news team in her freshman fall because of her love of writing, talking to people, getting the most up-to-date news on campus, and having a large community of fellow students to share these interests with.
