HRC discloses diversity recommendations

Author: Kathryn Flagg

Unveiling long-awaited and long-overdue recommendations on diversity at Middlebury College, Director of the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life Augustus Jordan announced last Thursday in an e-mail to the College community that the Human Relations Ad-Hoc Committee had completed its preliminary draft. The Report of the 2006 Human Relations Committee (HRC), which outlines 35 recommendations for the institution, marks a significant step towards notably enhancing and tackling the climate of diversity at the College.

Of the report's recommendations - all 35 of which Jordan notes are important - the most sweeping and arguably crucial proposals call for changes in staffing, structural and critical incident protocols.

First and foremost, the report recommends the creation of a Dean of Institutional Diversity - an "expert in diversity," said Jordan, who chaired the HRC, "who would help us recruit and retain faculty, staff and students from underrepresented groups." Jordan stressed that this person would be responsible for evaluating, on a continuous basis, the atmosphere of diversity at the College - the very task undertaken this year by the HRC.

The report also makes significant recommendations for enhancing the academic integration of questions of diversity, envisioning the current PALANA intercultural center as a center rooted in academic endeavors. The draft calls for the establishment of a faculty director for the center responsible for exploring questions of the curriculum related to diversity issues. This person would also facilitate directly with student groups and centers on campus that deal with diversity.

"This might help facilitate work with the Scott Center, with Rohatyn Center, with Chellis House so that we might be coordinating together around issues that have to do with race, ethnicity, religion, gender and international issues," said Jordan.

The report also recommends that PALANA remain a residential center in some capacity, though it advocates retaining students who are doing independent research in issues pertaining to diversity or student leaders of campus diversity groups.

Though specific in their intent, Jordan noted that the exact ways in which these curricular and structural changes should take place are left open-ended in some parts of the report.

"As a committee we didn't want to over-prescribe how it all should work," he said, "but rather sort of set a vision of what we thought was needed with respect to the curriculum side of the campus."

Aside from these staffing and structural issues, the HRC directly confronted problems relating to communication with the campus regarding "critical issues" of race and diversity.

"What we've seen is that sometimes an event will happen on campus that has racial or ethnic or religious overtones to it, or people are concerned that it might," said Jordan. He noted that often the Department of Public Safety, the Dean of Student Affairs office and occasionally the judicial boards become involved in these incidents and that communication with the larger community is hindered by the lack of any existing protocol. Communication is further complicated by the need to protect the privacy of individuals involved in delicate incidents.

"We're a small community," he continued. "We expect to be informed, and yet sometimes that bumps up against confidentiality issues. We want to respect both sides of that divide."

The report suggests establishing a concrete protocol - a "critical incident protocol" - for gathering key administrators and College officials to talk about the ramifications of the event and determine the best way to inform the campus of these events.

"You can't write a formula or write a rule that solves [the tension between protecting confidentiality and informing the College]," said Jordan, "because every case has unique components to it. The problem that we're experiencing now is that there isn't such a protocol. We're looking for a process that would help us as a campus move through that kind of incident."

In an effort to increase transparency, the report also calls for published reports at the end of fall and spring terms outlining, in a narrative summary, the number, nature and outcome of incidents classified as harassment.

Other recommendations in the report invite the faculty to explore programs of study in race and ethnicity, increased training for human relations advisers to provide support to those who experience harassment and increasing involvement for "underrepresented" persons in the recruiting, judicial, staff and faculty positions. All 35 recommendations, as well as the full text of the draft report, are available on the College's Web site.

These recommendations are the result of work done by HRC members spanning nearly eight months. Focus groups and interviews were held with staff members, students and faculty from various offices and student groups within the College, and two open meetings were held earlier in the year to solicit community input.

While the report does not strive to redefine the College's definition of diversity, and while the report also states that it makes the "glaring omission" of examining the status of women on campus, the response to the report has been largely positive.

"I think it's a very thorough, tremendous report," said Patti McCaffrey, president of the staff council, at one of the open meetings held Monday to solicit responses to the report.

The current HRC committee was assembled last fall at the request of President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz. According to Jordan, during the spring term "several incidents that happened on campus … alerted people that perhaps we should look at diversity issues again in a more formal way."

Prior to the mid 1990s, the HRC served as a standing committee. More recently, it was established as an ad hoc committee in 1999. "That followed some critical incidents that happened in '98, '97," said Jordan. According to Jordan and the current HRC report, several of the recommendations from the 1999 report were implemented successfully. Using the 1999 report as a point of reference for developing recommendations, the Committee was charged with revisiting these recommendations and evaluating the current campus climate on diversity.

While the HRC will convene again after the following two weeks of comment from the community, Jordan predicts that the report as it stands currently will not see any major changes. Furthermore, he hopes that the implementation of these recommendations will move smoothly - though the HRC itself will not oversee this part of the process.

"Our role in the process is to provide the recommendations to the president," said Jordan. He noted that once the final report has been delivered to the president's office, the task falls to the president's staff to carry out recommendations and delegate responsibility.

"We've tried to provide enough detail so that people can get started," said Jordan.