President’s Office Updates Community on Steps to ‘Address Bias and Identity-Based Issues’
Pennsylvania Hall (William Oehler/The Gettysburgian)
By Vincent DiFonzo, Editor-in-Chief
On Thursday, the President Bob Iuliano’s chief of staff Kris Stuempfle sent a campus-wide email updating the community on steps the College is taking to “address bias and identity-based issues.”
The update comes after a campus-wide email sent by Iuliano on Oct. 3 that announced new initiatives the College is taking in light of the incident in which a racial slur was cut into the body of a student at an informal on-campus social gathering last month.
In the email, Stuempfle announced that nearly 20 students have already joined administrators in conversation on how the College can improve in informing the campus community “when an identity-based incident directly impacts members of our campus community.” The College’s current policy regarding bias reports and how the community is informed can be found here.
“The group made good progress and tackled important questions related to the frequency and mode of communication, among other topics. Another meeting will be held with this group later this month to continue this work,” wrote Stuempfle.
The College also retained Jason Craige Harris of the Perception Institute to lead campus dialogue. The Perception Institute is a “think-tank of researchers and strategists who work to achieve dignity, belonging and fairness through solutions that can transform how institutions function and how we engage each other,” according to its website.
Stuempfle wrote that Harris will meet via Zoom with a group of student leaders this weekend “to solicit feedback on his ideas for a campus dialogue series on race, identity, accountability, and repair.”
With the help of Harris, the College will launch a campus dialogue series in the next few weeks in order to “deepen mutual understanding among us and to expand our awareness of how bias and othering function, their impact on us and others and what we can do to foster lasting change, including an examination of our structures, policies and practices.”
Concluding the email, Stuempfle acknowledged that there is “much work ahead” while expressing gratitude for the work that has been completed so far.
