Community Conversations Event Discusses Anti-Racism

Staff, faculty and student leaders elaborate grassroots anti-racism work at Santa Clara

The Office for Diversity and Inclusion hosted a Community Conversation event on Feb. 2 to discuss the antiracist grassroots efforts that have emerged on campus in recent months.

Ray Plaza, Director of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, moderated the discussion, and representatives from the Inclusive Excellence Student Advisory Council (IESAC), Associated Student Government (ASG), Multicultural Center (MCC), Staff Senate, Faculty Senate, Racial Justice Coalition and the Alumni Association all talked through their efforts toward fostering an antiracist environment at Santa Clara.

Hayley Howard and Angel Lin, co-chairs of IESAC, mentioned they are formulating working groups with different students on campus in order to help streamline the audit demands, in addition to their work on the quarterly diversity forum.

ASG President Ciara Moezidis discussed everything the student government is currently working toward.

“In the beginning of our term last year, we focused on centering BIPOC voices where we can and really prioritizing them,” Moezidis said. “So [now we are] trying to engage in a lot of conversations with other MCC and IESAC leaders to understand that we are representatives of the entire student body, but we are not here to speak for other students of color but rather uplift their voices and give them the platform to speak.”

Moezidis mentioned that ASG is also pushing for greater student representation at the Trustees level and on the subcommittees, as well as advocating for the Student Body President to sit in on the Trustees meetings next year.

MCC Director Ángel Macías discussed the areas of focus for the MCC.

“We really want to keep the momentum going with making sure that this year and leading up into the next year that once we come back we are able to continue to have a strong community at SCU, that we are amplifying each other’s voices, that we are providing spaces for people to discuss things that impact them as an SCU student [and] things going on in the world,” Macias said.

Lauren Baines and Julia Voss from SCU Racial Justice Coalition then spoke about the coalition’s mission of fighting white supremacy and racial injustice through the working groups they have created.

Leslie Gray from the Faculty Senate discussed the input the faculty gave on the audit.

“Most faculty really support the recommendations that CSS be reorganized, but with the idea that Black faculty, staff and students be at the center of any decision making process and any implementation of the recommendations,” Gray said. “There were also a lot of comments that the university should use its Jesuit values as guiding principles for defining what is meant by safety and that it should include all forms of safety.”

Staff Senate President and MCC Adviser Joanna Thompson talked about the new antiracism working group the Staff Senate had created to advance diversity, equity and inclusion on campus and to help amplify the voices of Black, indigenous and people of color within the staff community. The group is also designed to find any gaps in resources and advocate for those staff needs in those areas. 

There are three subcommittees in this working group. One focuses on policies and proposal recommendations and another on outreach and employee research groups. The third subcommittee targets education and professional development.

Associate Director of Community Engagement Jenny Sullivan from the Alumni Association shared how their department is engaging alumni of color.

“Our alumni relations team along with our National Alumni Board of Directors continue to hold each other accountable to be committed to learning, to getting our alumni involved in the university wide conversations and to learn from those alumni and from the experiences that they had both at Santa Clara as students and now in their postgraduate life and how they are connected with the university,” Sullivan said.

Margaret Russell, Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, discussed how these grassroots conversations should happen more often.

“What I am wondering is if this is the only time we have had a chance to hear about each other’s work and if maybe we should regularize this, so that we can all keep in touch with each other,” Russell said.

The next Community Conversation will be held on March 2 and there will be a campus wide message sent out, so students can follow up on the different resources discussed during this conversation.