Stories of social injustice filled student newspapers’ pages throughout the previous academic term. Incoming students will not only be made aware of these issues, but they will also be provided with tools to discuss them and similar topics in order to diminish occurrences of discrimination. The university will attempt to instill a sense of acceptance in new students before they even step on campus.
Current UW-Madison students are using the online Tonight program and administrators are working on new efforts to help students understand inclusivity and acceptance. They plan to catch this new batch of Badgers at the beginning of their collegiate experiences, in hopes that they will be the group to moderate the campus climate.
The Tonight program is an educational tool created by University Health Services that discusses sexaul assault, dating violence and bystander intervention.
The program is tweaked slightly every semester to remain up-to-date with campus resources, edit necessary vocabulary and more.
This year the program includes a new video that explains campus disciplinary processes. It will also feature David Blom, the new full-time Title IX Coordinator, and explain his purpose.
The biggest addition to Tonight, however, goes beyond the online program. Students will now be required to meet with a group of peers in the fall after completing the program.
“The additional in-person programming will have a pretty substantial impact,” said Sam Johnson, a violence prevention specialist at the End Violence on Campus unit at UHS. “These in-person workshops will really set a tone for community norms and will follow-up on the foundational knowledge that students are introduced to through Tonight.”
This change was made in response to the Association of American Universities Climate Survey recommendations, which also suggested the newly developed Greek life task force.
Additional summer education for new students will occur during Student Orientation, Advising and Registration or SOAR.
The 24-hour program sends important messages to attendees, including topics of inclusivity. First Wave—an artistic student group connected to the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiative that specializes in spoken-word performances—emphasizes topics of diversity, respect and community during their performance at SOAR. The script is never the same each year and changes along with campus climate and recent events.
New to SOAR this year is an appearance by Dean of Students Lori Berquam. She will conduct a closing speech for students and parents that will send them off with explicit expectations for the topics mentioned in the First Wave performance and throughout the program.
“[Berquam] is going to leave them with a sort of charge moving forward and tell them what they need to do next,” Assistant Dean of Students and director of the Center for the First-Year Experience Carren Martin said.
SOAR is one of multiple steps in another new set of processes being implemented this term, such as the “Our Wisconsin” diversity training program.
UW-Madison junior Katrina Morrison proposed the program to Chancellor Rebecca Blank as part of a campaign she was able to establish during her Associated Students of Madison internship.
“Being a student of color on this campus, I know how difficult dealing with the bad campus climate is,” Morrison said. “I felt that the best way to fix that would be to educate my peers about that right when they get to campus."
The program requires new students (in Fall 2016 only students in Sellery, Sullivan, Cole, and Leopold residence halls must fulfill the requirement; all new students will in Fall 2017 if the pilot attempt is successful) to participate in two sessions.
The first—which will occur during the first three weeks of first semester and will take an hour and a half—will introduce the topics and discuss diversity vocabulary.
The second segment will take twice as much time and take place during weeks four through nine of the fall semester. This portion involves more student participation and opens up conversations of identity through numerous small-group discussions. Facilitators will also address recent events and problems campus has had with hate speech and bias.
Joshua Moon Johnson, special assistant to the Vice Provost of Student Life and former director of the Multicultural Student Center, worked with Morrison and other students, faculty and staff in the "Our Wisconsin" working group to form the cultural competency program. He will continue to oversee the director, who will be hired soon.
Program leaders plan to encourage students to use their voices and talk about difference in a respectful manner.
“We also want to teach students to recognize what injustice might look like, and have the skills to intervene, to really be vocal about what we see as acceptable in our community here at UW-Madison,” Johnson said.
Johnson administered students from various groups, including ASM and BlackOut, and pulled them together to find common goals that they could present to senior administrators.
According to Johnson, the program has capitalized on the expertise faculty and staff on campus offer to the subject, and he and others have also toured the country to gain more knowledge to create the diversity training program.
Johnson also leads a working group composed of faculty, staff and students to compile proposals for cultural inclusion and social justice training.
Blank asked members of the UW-Madison community to submit ideas to make the campus a more welcoming environment. 107 proposals were received, containing a wide variety of solutions to the most prominent problems.
Everett Mitchell, who will be leaving his position as UW-Madison’s director of community relations at the end of June, is the chair of the committee that will review the proposals and submit between five and 10 to the chancellor.
“The goal is to get a mixture of potential projects that can impact all of campus,” Mitchell said. “We’ll weed through all of these to find the ones that will move us forward to a stronger future.”
The group’s criteria is simple: It has to be implementable and must impact a broad population. The few that are selected will be recommended to Blank, who will then decide which ones, and how, to implement them.
All of the above ideas will take some time to take effect, but administrators hope that the knowledge reaching incoming students will eventually extend to all of campus and the greater Madison community.
“We’re aware that these changes are not going to eliminate sexism [or] racism,” Johnson said. “But we want people to be able to understand what is acceptable and stand up for what is not.”
UPDATE June 13 1:05 p.m.: This story has been updated to include additional information regarding which residence halls will receive the "Our Wisconsin" diversity training program.
