By Georgie Hicks
On January 10 President George Bridges announced a new equity symposium that will be happening later this year. In the email Bridges states, “For almost 20 years, our college-wide program, Day of Absence/Day of Presence, provided a focal point for this important work each spring. This year, with the vital leadership from Vice President Chassity Holliman-Douglas, we will develop a more robust event for learning about equity”. Closing with, “It is my sincere hope that this event reinforces our commitment to addressing these critical issues facing the college and society.” I sat down with Chassity Holliman-Douglas Vice President / Vice Provost of Equity and Inclusion to discuss the changes that will be happening and how she is settling into her new job here at Evergreen.
Since starting your job here at Evergreen what particular challenges have arisen stepping into a leadership position after the protest and the school being in the media?
I think the hyper alertness, you know, based on what our campus, our community experienced last year we’re now all very alert you know.” “We’re all wanting to be involved with trying to move our campus forward, so that’s been a unique experience for me. I’ve never been at an institution were so many people are wanting to, what I used to say, play in my sandbox. So typically I’m over equity and inclusion and its hard to get people to buy into it and to want to be a part of it but here everybody’s in it, everybody’s involved. So it’s a unique experience for me.
On January 10 George Bridges sent out an email announcing an end to DOA/DOP and calling for student contributions for the equity symposium that you are the head of. How did the change of events come about? Is there a group of people who make these decisions? Or was it you or George?
Right, so what I’ll say is that to the best of my knowledge our senior leadership group, which is all of our vice presidents, our chief of staff, they asked me if I would come up with an event that would increase our communities understanding of cultural competence and social justice [and] help to increase our sense of belonging as a community and really give us that space to come together and talk about what our challenges are. [With] students faculty and staff I was asked to create this program and to put together a group of people to help me to do it. And then to hopefully launch it so that’s the extent of my knowledge and what I’ve been asked to do
In the email [President Bridges] says it’s going to be a more “robust” event, does that mean it’s going to be longer than two days?
I think what George and the senior leadership team has asked me to do is really create spaces were we can, where our different affinity groups can talk about our own unique experiences but then also be intentional about inclusion. Where we all come together and hear from one another about our experiences and what responsibility we have in helping each other to build better experiences. So when I think about robust, I’m thinking about providing opportunities for students, faculty and staff to submit workshop proposals [so they can] be a part of it. I’d like to see a national speaker come. You know just really creating more robust opportunities for us to have dialogs and not just dialogs, you know, but I want to see tools. We talk a lot but we need to walk away with tools and actions plans.
Are you aware the perception that this change of events makes the school appear to be admitting fault over DOA/DOP? What plans does the school have for dealing with media perception around this change?
I was not aware, I have not heard [that] from any students… I have a steering committee of students, a couple of faculty members and staff who have came together. They were a part of the planning of the last DOA/DOP so now they’ve joined me. I didn’t not know that students had that perception but what I will say is that I, with me coming in being brand new, [with] fresh ideas, this was the new idea that I came up [with], that we’re coming up with. And I don’t see it as the same as DOA/DOP. I don’t see it as replacement of DOA/DOP. I see it as when I came to this institution this was the type of event that I wanted to be able to provide for my campus community.
Is there a plan for media coverage?
Like I said, we don’t have specific plans but we will be working. It’s limited, we’re in the beginning stages and this steering committee have met twice, three times, we just had our third meeting last week. And so right now we’ve just developed our work plan for media, it’s on here. We have all these different subcommittees, we have one subcommittee that’s over marketing and communications they’ll be working very closely with Zach [Power’s] office, the college relations office. So we will be developing those plans I believe it is a very important.
So you haven’t gotten much response from students outside of people who want to do workshops?
So we, again we’re in the beginning stages. So we have the steering committee and now we have President Bridges email that went out to everyone and it had our email address on there. We’ve received at least twenty-five people who have said they want to be a part of the planning and many of them were students and so our next step is, now that we’ve identified what the subcommittees are, an email will go out probably by next week and it will list all the subcommittees we have, inviting those volunteers to now be a part of those subcommittees. We’re going to send it out to the larger campus community of people who have not emailed us yet [because they] can still [email us], there’s still a place to be involved with the planning.
So that leads into my next question, which is just about transparency, and I acknowledge you are just in the beginning of planning.
Ya, but you know I’ve learned a lot being here about trying to as transparent as possible and so the email will come out next week and it will go to faculty, staff and students and when the call for proposals goes, it it will be to all stakeholders faculty, staff and students. We will be sending save the dates. We just developed our calendar at the last meeting and so save the dates and call for proposals will go out by the end of February. You can expect to see that information and we’re even going, [Because] we realize that students, not all students but some students may need some assistance on putting together workshop proposals and so were putting together help sessions to help students to put together their proposals and so those dates will be advertised in February as well. So we have a lot of work to do.
You can contact the planning committees at equityandinclusion@evergreen.edu
