USU holds first inclusivity symposium since 2013
More than 300 students, faculty and staff attended the first Inclusion Excellence Symposium at Utah State University since 2013 — revived this year by Aggies Think, Care, Act.
The symposium aims to create a campus-wide dialogue on issues facing the diverse minority groups on campus and their potential solutions.
The symposium was held in the midst of high national tension regarding immigration laws and LGBT rights. There have been reports that President Trump’s administration is planning to reverse Obama-era recognitions of gender fluidity.
“Our nation needs help in this,” USU President Noelle Cockett said. “It is absolutely frightening to read every day of examples of across our country where people are damaging others simply because of their race, their religion, their sexuality, their gender, and I really think it’s so important that we’re doing all of these things, through outreach, through research, and education, at Utah State.”
Chairman of the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation Darren Parry also addressed the violence in his keynote speech.
“My heart was broken this past week, when I heard of the senseless shooting of the University of Utah woman, and then again later, with the senseless shooting of those people practicing their religion in the synagogue,” Parry said. “Things like that can’t happen. We as a society are too good for that. We need to do better.”
The symposium was a blend of research and education, often focusing on practical methods to address problems facing minority populations on campus.
“Unless we include the concepts of inclusiveness and respect, we will never be successful,” Cockett said. “Just focusing on diversity is not enough. We must have the conversations about how our campus, our communities can be inclusive, and how we can be respectful of that diversity, that these are also very important ingredients in our success.”
Two keynote speakers divided the conference into morning and afternoon sessions. Parry, who gave the morning keynote, focused on reconciliation and cooperation in fighting problems facing diverse populations. The afternoon keynote was held by Angela Morrison, a law professor at Texas A&M University, who discussed five myths about immigration and immigration policy.
In addition to the two keynote sessions, 40 breakout speakers presented at the symposium, covering a variety of topics; sessions included “Connecting Communities of Color,” “Working with Veteran and Service Member Students” and “Strategies for Speaking out Against Everyday Prejudice.”
The symposium was organized by Aggies Think, Care, Act, a coalition of 28 USU organizations centered on convening and coordinating on-campus organizations to better focus their efforts. Eri Bentley, the chair of the Aggies Think, Care, Act committee, said the event was intended to provide students and staff with the tools to work on the problems facing diverse students at USU.
“We wanted information to be appealing and digestible to everybody, information that everybody feels like they can do something about when they learn,” Bentley said. “Research is great, and we want that too, but if somebody was going to present research, we wanted them to include a ‘so what’ kind of piece — what are we going to do with the information the research presents?”
The original symposium was run through different offices that were shuffled or eliminated during university restructuring. After years of development and coordination, Aggies Think, Care, Act placed their attention on the abandoned project.
“We realized that there were a lot of great programs and presentations happening across campus, but we’re not collaborating much with each other,” Bentley said. “We felt it would be a great idea to bring the symposium back as a centralized training and exchange of ideas opportunity.”
The symposium is also part of a wider campus effort to consolidate and coordinate the disparate groups that individually work on issues related to diversity. The recently-formed Latinx Cultural Center was created in part to provide a more singular resource for Latinx students at USU to engage with on-campus events and opportunities.
Bentley said that she hopes the symposium will become an annual occasion, but also that Aggies Think, Care, Act will continue to help students and staff find resources on diversity.
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