Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to campus! I wanted to briefly write and share the updates that we shared this morning at the Office for Equity & Inclusions first annual Diversity Summit, as a resource for the work we are doing, as well as a tool for being transparent and accountable to this work. Here are the highlights of some of the work we’re dong:
Within our Department
- Deepening personal knowledge – SHAPE Intern and SHAPE Director have been reading the text “Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement” and having weekly discussions. The intention behind this practice is to continue reflecting on how we can integrate anti-racist, transformative, and restorative practices into our programming and services, using examples provided in this text.
- Critical reflections on social media posting – presenting a diversity of content from BIPOC activists, agencies that center BIPOC voices, as well as resources that highlight a diversity of relationship types (polyamorous, non-monogamous, asexual/aromantic, etc.)
- Ensuring social media posts are accessible. Some examples include:
- Including image descriptions and alternative text on Instagram and Facebook Posts
- For videos shared on these platforms, ensuring closed captions are offered in the live versions when possible and included in the recordings
- Survivor Love Letter Campaign (collaborating with WesWell)- including love letters to survivors who are incarcerated, to challenge prison industrial complex as another form of violence
Collaborations outside Our Department
- Student Group Outreach (for planning events) – when planning events such as Survivor Solidarity Month in April (our biggest collaborative event of the year), ensuring we are reaching out to student affinity groups to center BIPOC and other marginalized students’ perspectives in curating events and resources offered in the calendar.
- Student Group Outreach (for providing services) – we have started engaging with the Resource Center student leaders, and plan to connect with other student affinity group leaders on campus to seek guidance on the following:
- How can we be best providing services to your community?
- What type of content would you like to see from the SHAPE Office?
- How can we be supporting your work and be better collaborators?
Please feel free to reach out and offer feedback as you see fit. We’d love to hear your ideas about how we can be doing the work to the best of our ability, and be supportive, active collaborators.
Take care,
Johanna