After the final campus engagement session Tuesday, committee members say that they want to gather more student feedback on what should be included in an upcoming campus diversity plan.
The committee hopes to see more student involvement in future engagement sessions in the spring when community members will be given a similar opportunity for input on the first draft of the plan, according to Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee Co-chair Ruth Litovsky.
Committee members say they believe community involvement is high, but student participation has lagged.
“I think there’s been a lot of staff and some faculty,” Ad Hoc Diversity Planning Committee Co-chair Ryan Adserias said. “We haven’t had as many students as I was hoping to have originally.”
According to committee member Eric Schroeckenthaler, the committee hopes to extend its reach to students, such as by increasing its online presence.
“Students have a very different perspective on campus than staff and faculty and it’s an important perspective, because we are central to this campus,” Schroeckenthaler said.
Schroeckenthaler said the committee is hoping to get more students involved by asking for feedback in an engagement session for international students and in one jointly held by Associated Students of Madison Diversity Committee and LGBT Campus Center.
The goal for the engagement sessions is to find out from the community what their main concerns are toward diversity on campus. The Diversity Planning Committee is going to integrate these concerns in the first draft of the Diversity Plan.
The Diversity Plan has been discussed since February 2013. A previous plan expired in 2008, so it needed to be updated, Litovsky said.
“We’ve been working since February ... gathering our initial thoughts ... and pouring over lots of different data and talking to all kinds of different folks,” Adserias said.
Wisconsin Public Television staff member Jen Hadley said she believes the Diversity Plan should encourage communication from people of all different walks of life.
“I would like to see places where people of different backgrounds and ethnicities socialize together,” Hadley said. “We may come together on campus, but then we all go into our own neighborhoods and do our own separate things.”
At a session late Monday night attended by many custodians and manual laborers, participants discussed some of the diversity problems they have faced in their field. One issue raised was lack of language and translation support.
Other topics discussed in breakout sessions were revisions to ethnic studies courses and teaching assistant diversity training programs.
