 Really? Quick day, I guess. Thank you, everyone, for coming. I'm Eileen Theodore Shusta, I'm chair of the library's committee on inclusion and diversity and who is sponsoring this event today. Raton restrooms are behind you by the stairwell. Hopefully we don't have any emergency alarms go off, but we do, we can just walk out the front door. I want to introduce today our Dean of Libraries, Scott Seaman. Oh, there he is. He'll be doing introductions of our panelists, thank you. Well, thanks everybody for coming out this afternoon. We really appreciate this tremendous turnout. I'm Scott Seaman, Dean of Libraries, and it's my distinct honor to be able to introduce our panelists and our moderator. And so first, I'll start with Dr. Sherry Clark. Dr. Clark is Ohio University's vice provost for diversity and inclusion. She came to Ohio University in 2014 and has instituted a number of programs since her arrival that have increased diversity and created an inclusive campus climate. These programs include the Multicultural Leadership Ambassadors, a Multicultural Junior Faculty Mentoring Program, a Diversity Strategic Planning Process for the Colleges, Native American Outreach, and a partnership with the Southern Regional Education and Board to aid in the recruitment of underrepresented faculty. Dr. Clark holds a PhD in Higher Education Administration from the University of Nebraska. Dr. Jason Pina joined Ohio University in 2016 as the Vice President for Student Affairs, where he works to foster the intellectual and personal development of all of our students. He's charged with oversight of approximately 400 university staff and 3,000 undergraduate student employees. With more than 20 years professional experience at public and private four-year institutions, he is recognized, he is a recognized authority on leadership and in student affairs. Dr. Pina holds a doctoral degree from Johnson & Wales, master's in educational specialist degrees from University of Northern Colorado and a bachelor's degree in economics from Occidental College. Sarah Trauer, our third panelist, came to Ohio University as Executive Director and Title IX Coordinator in University Equity and Civil Rights Compliance in July 2016. She's responsible for overseeing and monitoring all activities relating to civil rights compliance for all of Ohio University constituents on all of our campuses. Prior to joining Ohio University, Sarah served as Associate General Counsel at the University of Kansas. She holds her Juris Doctorate from the University of Missouri and a bachelor's degree in history and economics from William Woods College. Our moderator is a librarian in Alden Library. Katie Matthews is head of collections assessment and access right here at Ohio University. She's also a doctoral student in higher education at OU and her research interests include social justice issues and academic libraries. So please join me in welcoming our panelists and moderator. Thank you, Scott, for that very nice introduction. And as the moderator, I'm just gonna jump right in, ask some questions and let our guests do all the talking. So jumping right in there, what values guide all of you in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of University Equity and Civil Rights Compliance? And what do you do to help support those values? Well, in diversity and inclusion, we're guided by the value that every individual has worth and that everybody's voice should be heard, particularly voices that have historically been overlooked, shoveled under, or those voices that have not historically been at the table. So the work that we do in diversity and inclusion reflects exactly that. We try to create a campus climate that welcomes and respects all individuals. And we do that through our programming, our resources, the initiatives that we have, and being very present, hopefully, in the lives of faculty, staff, and students in a positive manner. In University Equity and Civil Rights Compliance, what I have said is the role of our office is to ensure one Ohio for all. And I think the fundamental tenet behind ensuring one Ohio for all is derived from a sense of respect, not only for yourself, but respect for each and every one of your brothers and sisters in the community that you encounter here at Ohio University. If you treat the individuals with whom you interact as you wish to be treated, then I think that we can achieve a common understanding of our shared values, our shared experiences, our differences, which enrich each and every one of us and help us to grow and become better, more diverse human beings. I guess in short, I would say that for our division, it's really around preparation and maximization. First of all, we offer a lot as a campus to our students, regardless of their level of undergraduate or graduate. So for us, it's really focusing on, do our students know everything they're entitled to beyond rights and responsibilities, but also their ability to recreate, participate. And what we tell folks is that you can do it all, but you need to learn, know about yourself. Probably say no to 99% of what the university has to offer and select what's important to you. The other part of it is preparation, preparing them to be the best student they can be at our institution. That sometimes means that we have to have difficult conversations with folks, but most of the time it's about supporting them. And that could be anywhere from nourishment and dining halls to the ability to play intramurals or be in our pool or be in our ice arena to what we do in our residence halls and the programming that happens across campus. So the core is our five C's that you can see hanging up in Baker, but it all gets down to our ability to prepare students to maximize their time with us and to maximize their time beyond their education here at the university. Can you talk a little bit more about the five C's? Sure. So there is civility, character, community, citizenship and commitment. They were instituted many years ago and it was interesting in the fall, which is my first fall at Convocation. President McDavid said it mentioned the five C's. And immediately I got an email from a lot of staff members and text messages. Did we just get rid of the five C's? And I didn't really know how embedded these five C's were in how folks committed themselves to the work of student affairs until after Convocation. Now there might have been something else that happened during Convocation that I got emails about as well, but really the focus was are we shifting away from what a lot of folks considered themselves to be part of what student affairs is like? So I see them intertwined into our community. It's really what we go back to when we had to make difficult decisions, but it's also something we hold each other accountable for is that are we doing something because it's right for us in this moment in time? Are we making quick decisions just because it's easy to get it off our plate or are we doing what's right and not what's easy? And sometimes it gets back to looking at those five C's, saying stop and reassessing where we're at as a division or as a department and particularly in our office. Thank you. I think the five C's also can be very helpful when even on an individual level, I'm thinking about microaggressions and how to respond to microaggressions and being mindful of the impact of those. So we're gonna get right into the microaggression discussion now. And just so we can all be familiar with microaggressions, I'm just gonna read a brief definition provided by Daryl Wing Sue. He was one of the early scholars who talked about microaggression in his book, Microaggressions in Everyday Life, Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. He defines microaggressions as brief and commonplace daily, verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults to the target person or group. Though they can often be subtle and unintentional, sometimes oftentimes, the impact can be quite immense on those experiencing microaggressions. So what programs and services does the university have in place to help create awareness, to help us understand what microaggressions are so that we can be mindful in our interactions with our campus colleagues? Well, I suspect a lot of the programs, specifically are in diversity inclusion, so I won't talk about those. I've been a witness to them, they're awesome. But one piece that I would say is our individual stories. So almost exactly a year ago, Dr. McDavis offered me the role that I have here at the university. And I would say, maybe within a week, I received two emails. And they were both from African-American men, one an employee here at the university, another an alum who works in another state. And they both told me the same story independently. And they said to me, don't wear a polo shirt off campus. And I said, well, okay. And I knew why. And just because I didn't really know these people, I decided to ask why to get them to tell me why. So well, if you wear a polo shirt off campus, they're gonna think you're a new coach in town. Now, the microaggression is a couple levels. One is when I came to campus throughout the spring, I visited campus four times before I moved here in June. And I told staff that I was interacting with this story, and they just couldn't believe it. So I gave me an indication of maybe the level of subtlety that they notice in their own environment being in a dominant group and what maybe the relationship they didn't have with their colleagues, because I didn't know this particular person that worked at the university. They felt like they needed to give me the heads up right after I took the job, right after I became public. And I said, well, that happens everywhere I've been. Things like that happen. So the first time I wore an Ohio University polo shirt to Kroger, I was at Starbucks. And a woman who I never met before welcomed me to town and wished me good luck in football season. Now, Sherry probably laughs because she's not surprised. I think maybe. But it hurts when you stop and really think about it. When I stop and think about it, I'll own it for myself. Now I coach college sports at three universities. I played football in college. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for football, because I wouldn't be able to afford to go to college. But when their first knee-jerk reaction is that, and when an alum who loves this place, because that same email he told me not to mess up, come in here after taking the job. And someone else who works here who really likes working here, the first thing they tell me, the first piece of advice, is not some great restaurant to go to or something to do on campus or people to meet is don't wear a polo shirt off campus. Not because it's gonna be some big overt attack of an individual, but because people are gonna make assumptions and have no qualms coming right up to you and wishing you good luck for the season. So, I didn't like it being confirmed, but I wasn't surprised. James, can I ask, did you say anything in response to her? Did you say thanks? Yeah, I told her I was Dr. Pina. Okay. I was a vice president student affairs. And I work with people outside of our academic programs, except for athletics. I'll be at the game, but I don't have a sideline pass. You'll be coaching other people there, right? Yeah. Yeah. So suffice to say, I think a part of it for me is telling my story, making space for other folks to tell their story, whatever they're coming from, and trying to make a space where people feel like they can ask a question like, well, why did you react that way? Or how did that make you feel? Because since I've gotten, and I may be wrong, and some of my colleagues in student affairs in the room, they hadn't had those kind of conversations, at least with the vice president, or at least in some of the meetings that I've been attending. So, to put that out there around microaggressions was important to me, because it seemed like it wasn't something that was really spoken about with the professional staff that I would be working with some days, 24 hours a day. You heard it mentioned that I did my doctorate at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska, and most of you will know that when you get to the dissertation stage, you're really excited. You're at a really great place. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Okay. It's a really exciting place to be at the dissertation stage. And I was with some faculty and staff. I also served at the University of Nebraska as associate to the president for the University of Nebraska system. So I worked there in addition to being a doctoral student. So I was talking about my research and the fact that I was heading to Mississippi, and I was excited to be going there and interviewing the sole subject of my research, the president of a private liberal arts college, Dr. Frances Lucas. So she was the entire subject of my research, which focused completely on her leadership and the leadership of women. So this faculty member said to me, it is really good, Sherry, that you are going to uplift an HBCU, a Strictly Black College in Mississippi, and a black female president. And I looked at him, and I did not know the term microaggression at that time, but the reality is my research was on a white female president, and the college, Milseps College, is a high liberal arts institution, highly selective, that is over 80% white, but it was just assumed, because I was African American, and I think the fact that I was going down South, and I'm not from Mississippi, I actually am from Ohio, that it was just assumed that this is the type of research I was doing, and this is the kind of person I was doing my research on. That's a microaggression. The other week I gave a fantastic presentation in front of a group of, it was really, really good, in front of a group of administrators, and after I was done, one of the executive administrators got up and instead of calling me a vice provost or a great administrator, this individual said, she's a really good resource for the campus. I see her as a resource. So I thought, this just does not feel right, it obviously still bothers me, so these microaggressions continue to happen regardless of where we are in the institution or what roles we play. Jason mentioned the importance of stories and telling stories, and one of the groups that I think does the very, very best to address microaggressions are the multicultural leadership ambassadors. If you have not heard the ambassadors, then you are missing out. The ambassadors are a group of select trained peer educators who are comfortable with their own diversity, and they represent a broad range of diversity. They're gay, they're lesbian, they have interacting identities, intersecting identities. They're from various socioeconomic levels. They run the rampage of differences, and we try very, very hard to be a microcosm of society. So when the ambassadors go out and the strength is sharing their own personal narratives, you get to hear what they're experiencing, and a lot of that narrative is based on microaggressions and how they've lived their lives on this campus or in the communities they come from. So that's one of the major areas that we have. Also when our directors go out and they present, they're often in classrooms and they're talking a lot about opening the space up for this conversation, this dialogue, so that we can talk about the issues and the many isms that plague our community, that are problems for us. So our directors are very, very present and very much in classrooms where they've been invited to talk about these particular issues. Okay. So thank you so much for sharing those personal accounts. Can you help us understand a little bit more about how we may identify microaggressions in our own interactions? A lot of our colleagues on campus would like to be respectful, mindful, inclusive of our colleagues on campus, our fellow students, staff, and faculty. So with your personal stories that's helping us to begin to understand how we might recognize microaggression in our own actions and words, can you help us continue to understand things that we can look for, things that we can recognize in our own words to help us identify when microaggressions may be occurring? I think that one of the programs that Dr. Clark offers is one of the best programs that I had the good fortune of attending earlier this fall and that's the... Side. The executive side. Yeah, the executive side program. But she has other programming that addresses it. I think that what I would say is that we each come from our own experience and we bring to the table that life experience. And I think that we don't realize oftentimes what are inherent biases that we have assembled over a lifetime. And so I think one of the first steps is being reflective and thinking about where did I come from? What are the privileges I enjoy? What are the privileges that others don't enjoy because they come from different life experiences or have had different opportunities and different backgrounds? And I think the exercises that Dr. Clark's speaker took us through, brought to the forefront, frontal lobe consciousness, how many of these things are not conscious. And so you have to initially... It's kind of like addiction. You gotta first admit that you have a problem before you can work to correct the problem. And so becoming aware of those inherent biases so that you could become more sensitive to them because you can't then change your language. That was embedded in your question. How do you become more sensitive and change your language until you become sensitized to it and can recognize that different word choices are going to communicate a different message and be sensitive to making those purposeful choices not to continue to perpetuate those biases and commit a microaggression? I think that's part of the process. So educational opportunities like this, the programming that Dr. Clark offers, help become aware so that you can become sensitized and make better choices in the word choices and your interactions with others. And I just wanna echo what Sarah has said. I think one of the things we have to do is to be kind to each other and to try to have open conversations and dialogues with each other. Oftentimes, we are so afraid of saying the wrong thing to each other or maybe accidentally having a microaggression against someone that we just refuse to interact and that doesn't help us either. And Student Affairs has done a great deal of positive work to help us with difficult conversations and campus dialogues and those kinds of programs are really, really helpful. We have got to be able to talk to one another first and foremost. So if you're in a difficult situation and you're not exactly sure what to say, it's okay to say in a conversation, I might mess this up and if I do, would you forgive me and then we can correct each other at the end but the important thing is to communicate with one another. I don't think we all are always, not less, we are not always negatively intentioned when these types of things happen. Sometimes we simply don't know the right thing to say to one another. If I could pick up on what Sherry just said and I don't mean to butt in to your time but I think this analogy of the kitchen table is a fabulous analogy because picking up on what Sherry said in terms of kindness, oftentimes it comes out of ignorance or lack of understanding or lack of exposure. And so I will tell you that growing up I was shy and introverted and I still am very much an introvert but as I've gotten older, there's a certain degree of freedom in that you kind of don't care and so I've become much more like my mom I used to hate going to the store with my mom because my mom knew everybody and if she didn't know them, she would have their life story by the time we got out of the checkout line but I've come to appreciate my mom having done that and I can tell you that it has enriched me as I've become more willing to even standing in line in the airport or any place, just having a conversation with somebody I don't know because I learn about them and I learn about their life experiences and so I think what Sherry's talking about or Dr. Clark is talking about in terms of reaching out to each other and this kitchen table analogy, I would suggest that let's commit to a purposeful act of going out in our community and making a concerted effort to find people that we don't know and start having a conversation with them and learning more about them and then passing that along and asking them to have a conversation with people that they don't know because we are a community but in many respects I think in modern society we've become less of a community, less of a neighborhood, less connected and I think we need to reestablish those human connections so that we can have these positive conversations and learn more about one another and that will go a long ways to I think eliminating or reducing certainly the level of microaggressions that occur. I don't think I can add much to that. When I was 19, one of my mentors when I became an RA, his name is Jonathan Coolard and he was for a long time Dean of Students at Cal Berkeley and what he told me at 19 was with relationship comes grace and it goes along with what they just said, building relationships with folks and asking for grace when you misstep is a lot easier than not having any relationship at all. The reflection comment I think is so critically important, not just of your past but of your day, thinking about the interactions you had throughout the day and a quick story is that most Wednesday nights you can find me over in Walter Hall at the Student Senate meetings along with our Dean of Students, Jenny Hall Jones and it is amazing that almost every single person in there says you guys before they say whatever they're gonna say and these folks, the lack of gender inclusive language drives me bananas and it's pervasive on our campus too to the point where she and I could be in the ballroom and opposite ends and when someone's at the mic and says you guys we kinda look at each other and we try not to, we just look back and we try to do the subtle hints, pull aside the step with folks, I've put them on blast to our interim president last week now that I'm putting them on microphone now because I also want them to become more and more conscious and catch themselves but I can only take it so long, I can only be part of supporting organizations that may be perpetuating microaggressions for only so long because I'm fearful of staff and students and faculty who sit in that room and they're conscious of these microaggressions going unchecked. So a lot of it is what's the game plan because it's not always appropriate or helpful to stand up in the middle of the meeting and point fingers and do those things but it has to, my approach is to be gradual too and try to make the point so folks get a little bit more conscious of just the words they use because many of the folks that are using this introduction to their commentary self-identify as women but still say you guys, which drives me bananas and it may not drive other folks bananas but folks who are conscious about microaggressions based on general identity, that doesn't feel good and to be able to call that, if you have a privilege of being a male and calling that out then I think you should but would I have done it 20 years ago? Probably not, if I would have done it 30 years ago I probably wasn't thinking about that and being okay to save that as well is important but the reflection piece is, I'm glad you said that. Can we talk a little bit more about responding to microaggressions as Dr. Pina just brought up. How should we act in the moment? Do we respond? Do we call it out? If we don't respond is that implying that we agree? How should we as friends, colleagues on campus respond to microaggressions? I think it depends on where you are when the microaggression occurs and what kind of environment you're in. If you have an opportunity to talk to someone privately and to let them know, I am really good at putting the onus of something back on me. I can reflect on me and I can say, oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize that but in the terms of a microaggression I would say what you said really concerns me and my feelings are bothered by this and this is why and I simply wanted you to be aware. So I think you do have to let people know what they're doing but I also think you don't need to necessarily put them on blast depending on where you are and what the situation is like. I'll tell a quick story. I mean a lot of it has to do with your comfort level and your feeling of safety. I just came back from an alumni and development event in New York this morning and last night we're at an event, our students performed at Carnegie Hall which was awesome. If you could see the smiles in our students faces, it'd bring you to tears. They would just, it was awesome. Sorry. But a group of people said, okay, what are you doing after the concert? And I was like, I'm gonna go meet some friends at a gay bar and listen to show tunes. And they looked at me like I had five heads. So I put them on blasts because I'm like, why are you looking at me like that? And it made it super uncomfortable for that person. I'm not sure if they have a circle back about it. I might or may not follow up. But again, other circumstances, other people, other people on this campus I wouldn't share that with. Absolutely, absolutely. But I think you have to make those split second decisions on what you're gonna confront and what you're not gonna confront. And my hope is, is that that person's reflective and comes back at me in a couple of days and says I wanna talk to you about our interaction because it didn't go the way I'd want it to go. I hope that happens. But I would say 19 or 20 times it doesn't happen that way. And I also feel like, okay, am I gonna put myself out there again to follow up with that person? Because I stand behind what I say and what I did, that's not the issue at all. And I don't think I necessarily went beyond that line of professionalism. But I was taken aback by that person's reaction to what I was choosing to do with my time after work. Again, not surprised, but maybe I expect a little bit more from a person that's at a university that's as big and as diverse as we are. I echo what Jason and Dr. Clark have said. I think that one of the things that is difficult is the immediate impulse. When you're hurt to hit back. And so I think that it's important to think about what do you want to achieve with the conversation? And sometimes when the parable or the instruction, when you've been slapped from the other cheek, I'm not saying that you do that, but what I'm saying is that sometimes if you want to have a constructive dialogue hitting the back right then and there, it's not the way to do it. And so sometimes if rather than hitting the back in terms of which is going to shut down a dialogue and prevent a discussion and perhaps a connection, that maybe that's not the right way to go. I think that one of the difficult things because these happen instantaneously and you have to process is I think, thinking about these in advance, how am I going to respond if I find myself in that circumstance? Because what you practice is what you will ingrain as a habit. And so in some respects, rather than that targeting the heart, it allows you an opportunity to engage the mind when you feel that offense and you have the ability to maybe select from a number of responses. But again, having thought about what is for you as an individual, you know, Michelle Obama says when they take the low road, we take the high road, is that going to be how we go through life? Just because the person has offended us, are we just going to get lower and hit them back or are we going to attempt to engage them in a conversation that perhaps helps them understand, helps you determine whether the intent was with malice or out of ignorance. And if our goal is as a community to improve the quality of the dialogue and the quality of the human connections with others, then I think we do have to think about it in advance and think about what works for you. And again, I come back to respect, even when someone doesn't necessarily show you respect, you can be above that and show them respect and reach out and help to educate them about why that comment isn't constructive to the interaction. Thank you. So thinking about our current national political climate, can we talk a little bit about how we can be mindful in our actions specifically with our brothers and sisters from different cultures, religions, nationalities, particularly considering current events? I don't necessarily think that, do I think that the discourse has eroded in the current political climate? Yes, I do. But I think that the level of discourse and what we as human beings isn't dictated by a political climate. We choose as human beings to determine how, what is of value to us? And as Jason noted early on, the five C's or what we as an Ohio community have said reflect our values. And I think fundamental and essential to that is the concept of respect. And again, I come back to the sense of community and having discussion and respect is something that when I have been a guest instructor in classes, I've talked about respect and integrity. The corollary to that is you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. The same is true about respect and integrity. You can work for a lifetime to build that, but you can lose it in a second. And so it's a precious commodity that you have to guard in your interactions each and every day. And I think that again, if you approach your interactions with a desire to treat others as you would wish to be treated, then I think that, and that again assumes that you don't wish to be treated as a jerk, that will go a long way to having a positive dialogue and a positive interaction with the people that you encounter. Several weeks ago, we had a leadership team meeting in Student Affairs and I talked about the word empathy. And I really challenged folks to broaden what it means to be empathetic. That it's easy if it's a short leap to someone that has similar feelings or 90% of the way with you to close the gap and at 10%. But what happens to those colleagues and students who are 90% not with you? How do you find yourself working on being empathetic with them? And that's a hard thing. And for me, it really, I became more conscious of it moving to Ohio. I moved here in the middle of June. And then in the last 20 years, I lived in very blue states and Ohio isn't. So I really thought a lot about how do I talk to staff and try to understand what they're going through, how difficult it is for them maybe to support students who don't have the same belief system or are not raised. How do you become sensitive that you could be raised one way for 18 years and come to school and your employer or your RA or your roommate is a polar opposite and you can't bridge that gap of empathy. And given the change or given what's been going on nationally, really challenging staff to think about, not just the folks it's easy to be empathetic with or you're in the same boat, but those who have just the opposite feelings. And that's a lot of hard work. And it's hard on people, it's hard on individuals in either direction. But I truly believe if folks can become much more nuanced in their thinking around empathy and could stress themselves, then we'd have many more people that can find not common ground, but can understand and respect where people are coming from and be able to strip away some of the awful and negative and attacking language and behavior and talk about values and find more common ground around that piece of it. So empathy is a big piece for me and it's something that's been challenging for me personally. I try to put that out there to the staff when I talk to them what I'm going through and what my family's going through when it comes to the way we feel, being new in the state and what's happening and what's happening to people that we love and how they're reacting to it. I'm gonna make a really short comment about this because it's really a challenging area. I work on a floor where I hear a lot of political beliefs one way, but I also have students coming to me who are afraid. Students who are fearful of deportation, students who are afraid that they're being targeted just because of their belief system and who they are and where they're from. So it's a really big challenge. And I think for us, we have to really put on our listening ears. Remember when we were young, you put on your listening ears and then you tie the string under your neck so you can listen to everybody? I think that's what we really have to do because people are talking about these issues and we need to hear one another. And that enables us to be sympathetic toward one another and to understand each other. That it's really a difficult time now. And I find myself saying to people a lot, the struggle is real and the struggle is playing out in our offices and there are students who are just really, really fearful and administrators who are afraid and we don't really know what's happening, but because of the political climate, we've got to listen to one another and then from there we can take action. I don't know what that action is beyond paying attention and being sensitive to one another as Dr. Pina stated, but you've got to hear what the other person is saying. I think that's first and foremost and don't form any observations about anybody's belief. Listen to what they're saying and try to find a common place where you can get along. Thank you. So I'm hearing a lot of themes that circle around respect, kindness, grace and our relationships with each other, building those relationships, having empathy within those relationships and with others. Do you have any final words before we open it up to the audience to have some dialogue? Do you have any final words that we can take with us to carry forward as we interact with our campus communities? My only final comment would be that, not only do we listen to each other, but that we see each other because oftentimes this is another microaggression, people will say, well, I just don't see race and I just don't see gender and I just don't see color. And my comment to that is, yes, you do unless you are genuinely and physically site impaired. Then you have a reason not to see that if there really is a physical problem, but if not, you do see race. You do see gender. If people let you know what that gender is and we have to respect people and let them tell us who they are and how they want to be talked to and how they want to be identified in society. But I think we need to see one another and to make sure that in that seeing one another we're respectful of each other as individuals. That's the only way we make positive change. I guess the last thing I would say, but I agree with what Dr. Clark said, I think people need to commit to their own learning and behavior. You know, I think folks will go, when is a hot topic? They'll stop and think about it. They'll come to programs when they can. Thank you for all for coming. But we all have the same 168 hours in a week. And how do we assess our own learning, our own development, our own needs, whether we're going to use Alden as a source to read more deeply into what's going on or to search journals to look at what some more of the contemporary research is around stereotype thread or any other kind of topic related to diversity and social justice. There's this thing called Google. How important is it to get in touch on your own feelings on this topic? Where you feel like you are on a continuum of learning around this topic and what you're gonna do to commit to get deeper into that. I think that's the biggest piece because if you really know what your commitment level is, you'll know what your limitations are and give yourself permission to live a life that this is something that I don't plan on stopping at a certain age on trying to get better at doing this work. And if I think about the way I grew up and here I am X money years later, it's really different. I'm married to my high school sweetheart and she happens to be a woman of color and we've been together 30 years. When I think about my development and her development over that 30 years, a lot of it's influenced that we went to separate colleges, we were still raised in different households but we faced many micro and direct aggression from folks together as a couple and we still interact and react to those very differently. When something pops off nationally, she's deep in the Facebook and I turn Facebook off. I do that as a protection for myself and her reaction is to get deeper in knowing what's out there so she can support herself and others. So I think just being conscious of that and committing to your own learning and a lot of it has to be on your own time. Not necessarily coming up to me and saying, let's have lunch because I went to your program. We can have lunch because I eat every day but I'm not necessarily going to be that person that's going to be your encyclopedia around this work. So that commitment level, I think you have to own that work and not put it upon other folks to teach you. I would echo what Jason says but I would like to, I'm a preacher's kid so I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, it's a small immigrant Presbyterian Church of German immigrants and so one of the principles in terms of one of the biblical principles was love your neighbor as you love yourself and I think that that is something that has guided me throughout my life and you don't have to adopt that or accept that as a biblical principle but I think from just a basic tenant, loving each other as you love yourself is going to bring about empathy, is going to bring about respect, is going to open your mind to the kind of growth and work that Jason talks about and ultimately the responsibility is on each of us because this is not something that can be done unless each one of us commits to our own personal level of commitment to making choices and about how we're going to engage and how we're going to love our neighbors and how we're going to show respect. Thank you so much to our panelists and we would like to open the floor up to anyone who has a question, personal story, we would just like to have some dialogue so please we've got a microphone up here, we can pass it out to you or you can come up and have some questions. And if I try to educate people on why that's not the best thing to say, every time I get it, it's going to be mentally emotional. So I guess that's the question, how much of an illness is wrong with the victim and how much of that trust with other people to sort of help me out here. Just quickly, if someone considers himself a victim in any way, shape or form, there is no onus on them in my opinion. And that goes for a lot of issues in our society. So I don't think there's a default onus. I think your default onus is to take care of yourself. And sometimes that means confronting, sometimes that means being hurt and running away and getting away from that physical space as quickly as possible and probably a whole lot in between. So, but if you're going to say you're a victim, then there's no onus in my book. I agree with Jason, but I think that sometimes as Sherry said that we need to put on our listening ears, sometimes the person who commits the microaggression doesn't hear what they said. And so sometimes flipping that back around. And so let's say that the young lady sitting next to you said, where are you from? You turn around and you say, well, where are you from? I mean, maybe that will click in her mind, like, well, why is he asking me? He should know where I'm from. Starting that kind of thought process that stimulates maybe her own self-examination of an inherent bias that she has, it's a fairly simple thing. You don't then have to get into the explanation about why would you assume that I'm not from here? All that sort of thing. But that can be a way to stimulate her own thought and put the onus back on her. I'm sorry to use you as an example. I hope you're not offended. And I just may just say one thing. Another thing is taking the opportunity when there may not be necessarily a microaggression being done upon you to let folks know, if you're comfortable, how certain things impact you. So actually, she might have left. So does someone, yeah. So Megan, Vogel, and I work together. And we go to CVS every once in a while. And the first time I went to CVS probably last September. And somebody asked me, can I help you in one of the aisles? So I answered her. But I made a point because I'm just getting no Megan to tell her oftentimes when I'm asked, can I help you? I feel like I'm being checked out, like am I stealing something? Where maybe you feel like, oh, wow, they're being so nice. And I told the story of the Walgreens that was next to my house for 15 years. When I walked in looking like this, no one asked if they could help me. When I went on a weekend with jeans and sweats on, man, I was getting all kinds of help. 14 years, same security guy for 14 years. So I try to preempt it when I, especially with people I know I have to work closely with, that I'm not quite sure where they are in their continuum on this work to point things out and how I take it. And if she was here, I'd make her talk now. I think she was surprised that I took it that way, because she's like, it's Athens. They're just being friendly. But where I come from, that's not necessarily what's going down. I think we all recognize that we screw up. And so I think that the first place to start is to acknowledge that you screwed up. And to, as Jason said, ask for their grace. You've probably damaged the relationship. But hopefully over the time of that relationship, they have come to trust you and know a little bit more about what's in your heart and understand that it was not with malice and that you're trying really hard to learn and to grow and that in some way this journey that they are on with you is helping you improve and your desires of continuing that journey. And again, hopefully the grace will be there to allow you to regain that trust and continue that work. I think recognizing that it's a race. It's a cross-country race. You don't get there that quickly. It's not a sprint. So it's going to take time for people to grow and develop and get where they need to be, particularly around these issues of culture, inclusion, and diversity. Only I would add is what Dr. Clark said earlier is that reflection. Oftentimes, I'll circle back days or weeks later because it will bother me. And there's been times that I'll circle back. Something happens at work and I'll be playing golf with the same person a week later. I'm like, I need to tell you about something. I said X. I'm not sure how you took it, but it's been bothering me that it came out in my mouth. Nine times out of 10, I don't even remember you saying it. I've been staying up nights worrying about this. But I think that is another way to deepen that relationship. That they're like, wow, this person, Jason's thinking about something that was a passing comment I don't even remember. So he's trying to take this relationship and that part of the relationship seriously. So the technique I use a lot is circling back. And sometimes people are heated. And I am thankful I took a couple of days so we could be at a better place to actually interact when I've offended somebody or moved too quickly. I don't know who calls on people. I don't want K to get mad at me. We dig into anti-racist organizing and anti-racist with our church on military. We are showing up for racial justice as a new group that's being formed. And we want to get poor racial justice. What could I do if I hear somebody say that to you? What could it my standard be? So from my perspective, when someone asks me on a Wednesday, something, where are you from? Hello, everybody. It's actually really hard to judge what to say, right? Because, again, I think the idea was it depends largely on the context. But if someone's with me and I'm someone that's like, hey, where are you from? And I mean, I guess it's easier, not for me, but I guess the idea is the way I think of it is that if someone, you know, you're there, right, and some, it's easier for, I'll put it this way, I'm trying to formulate this. So I guess the idea is that I'm a brown person, right? Usually people ask me, where are you from? Are people either white people, no offense to anyone here? Or like, you know, generally with accents that are native to America, right? And so it's like, as someone who speaks and looks like them, it's easier for you, generally, to say, like, hey, what do you mean by that? And I say in the same position for you, right? As mentioned, if someone says, you guys, it's easier for me to sort of say, well, that's not cool. This is why is that language, explain why that language is bad and why that's not inclusive? So generally, at least the way I see it is that if you're coming from a position of privilege that someone else doesn't have, it's usually easier to sort of discuss those deficiencies. I don't really want to use the word deficiency here, but that's sort of what I'm not eloquent. But that's essentially what I'm getting at. Does that make sense? Oh, awesome. So to take this to another level, we have a 14-year-old daughter. And she's in the Athens Middle School. And she came home the other day and told us probably three stories about situations in which students in her school had been, in her perception, had had microaggressions committed against them, that they were students who were of color, who were, she's talked about a Muslim student who has brown skin, and the teacher said something like, can you translate this for me? And the kid is like, I'm from Michigan. You know, like, so she told us several stories, and so I guess I'm sort of interested from a parental perspective as we're starting to raise the next generation coming into the world. How do we encourage, I mean, we talk about it at home, you know, how we talk to people, how we treat people, being empathetic, being understanding, not making people's lives miserable, not making assumptions about people. However, when you're in a position where it's your teacher that's actually engaging in that behavior, how do we educate our kids on how to address those issues in a safe way when it's a person in power? That's to anybody. I think Dr. Chinunu has a response. Do you win some? Am I calling you out? Yeah. For those of you who have not met her, Dr. Winsome Chinunu who's the director of the Multicultural Center Multicultural Programs Office, she has great expertise in this area. And I really wanted her to be on the panel. Welcome Dr. Chinunu. I think there are two ways to sort of think about what happened with your child. But before that, there's a scholar, Kimberly Rockmore, and she is an African-American professor and she travels around the country and conducts workshops on microaggression. And one of the tools she offered us, it's called OFTD which is Observe, Think, Feel Desire. And she tells a story. She is out with a group of white men and they are, she's on a board with them, and they are at a stadium. And one of the men said, I wish we had, there was a way that we could get more women involved on this board. And another one of the men said, maybe we should have the meeting at the mall. And so, of course, she said she didn't want to get into her sister girl moment because that's the stereotype for black women. And since she's a professor, she sat back and she thought about it. And so, one of the things she said is, as an ally or someone who would like to respond to something like that, you observed, so you were thinking to yourself, what just happened and kind of replayed that in your head? So this is where you're observing. And then you reframe what they just said. And so you say, this is where you do the thinking. So you say, I think what you're saying is that women are mainly concerned with shopping. So you're saying it in a way that you're seeking clarification and you're not attacking because a lot of the research around microaggression is very often when it's pointed out, people feel like they're being attacked and you usually get nowhere because then it becomes a big thing and then it blows up. So it's like, I think what you're saying is that women are concerned with shopping and then you then give them a chance to say, no, that's not what I mean. And then you can say, well, that may not have been what you meant, but it sort of came off that way. And then so you observe, you think, you feel. And how does that make you feel? So if you are there, if you're in a position where a person who does not look American, whatever that means, is asked where he's from, how does that make you feel as another American knowing that this is a multicultural society? How does that make you feel if your supervisor is saying something to another employee and you know it's wrong? How does that make you feel as a manager? How does that make you feel as a male identified individual in a setting where women are clearly being demeaned as only being interested in shopping? How does that make you feel? And then you desire, what would you like to see happen? And so you can then say, well, probably what we need to do is so you as the ally would then say, your desire would be, maybe we should be more intentional about inviting women, maybe we need to probably advertise at this different places, maybe as men we need to specifically go up to them and ask them, what are some things that we can do? So those are one of the things that she talks about. And as regards to parents, I think there are two things that you can do. One, you could talk to the principal about having some cultural competency training for teachers because the majority of the teachers in the state of Ohio are white female who do not have the kind of cultural capital to work with students and there's tons of data on this, I'm not making this up, to work with inner city students, students from other countries, et cetera. So that's one way to go about it is to talk about having some cultural competency training. And the other way as parents is to talk about it. And that is hard because one of the things the research around diversity also shows too is the hardest people for us to talk to are our own families. So we come and we pontificate about in our roles as whatever we are, but then come Thanksgiving, you can't say to your uncle, shut up, what you're saying does not make sense and here are the facts. Or your grandmother, because you don't want to hurt their feelings. And so those are, it's either seek cultural competency training for the teachers as well as have those conversations in your home about these things. And again, as Jason mentioned it earlier as well is educate yourself. We're not all experts in all aspects and areas of diversity, but it's not hard and this microaggression, especially a lot of people talk about it when I go to classrooms and training with faculty, they talk about the way female faculty feel about comments that's made. The way sometimes someone might have a supervisor who's done some diversity training so they think they're expert in diversity and they make statements along with what we talk about more licensing, everybody know what that means. So more licensing pretty much means if for example, you have a black child and you're a white woman, then you think that you can say stuff about black women here and touch their hair and it's not going to bother them. So that's more licensing. So you think that oh well, I'm not racist, my best friend is black or I'm married to this person, I'm married to a white man. And the first thing I tell him is don't go around people and say stuff and then say you can sit because you're married to a black woman because you do not have the capital to do that because you may be married to me but you do not have the lived experience to talk about those things in a meaningful way, particularly don't go and sit around black people. And so that sometimes what tends to happen in cases like this where people have friends or they've done this and they think that they can't do it and nobody and they won't, people won't say anything or no they like me, no I've done this but no you need to know and understand and for supervisors in the room be mindful of some of these things as well and also understand that diversity is changing. Five years ago no one was talking about transgender issue, no we're all trying to learn about issues around transgender. So you have to constantly inform and update and microaggression, this is hard work. It's not easy. It is hard work, it's painful, it's not easy and a lot of us suffer in silence because some of us just can't be bothered anymore. So this is real, it's not an abstract thing with the panel. I really applaud the library for doing this because this is one of the things that we've been talking about a lot and especially in this area, era with what's going on with the election and subtle jabs here and there. Oftentimes we know people don't mean it but also understanding that if someone say to you you hurt my feelings, that it's not about you because then what tends to happen when we do that is then people say, well, I didn't really mean it that way and so now all of a sudden you've hurt someone and you and they've told you that you've hurt them and now you are centering yourselves and now it's no longer the person, it's you. Well you're crying because you've, you've hurt, I didn't mean it that way and you think I'm a bad person. No, that's not what I'm saying. It's not about you, don't center yourself, always think about the people who hurt, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you, Winsome. We're gonna take one more question and then we're gonna spend the remainder of our time together, just having conversations with each other around the kitchen table. So one more official question and then we'll go casual. So I'd like to take what Winsome just started as a conversation a little bit further and self-disclosure, I'm somebody who self identifies with several different underrepresented groups and I've kind of chosen this idea of battling these microaggressions as my hill to die on which is why I work in HR, yay. But what do, and I'll open this up for anyone, panelists or audience, how do we address those who say, oh well, I've been to a diversity training or oh, I read that article and they kind of just shut down to the idea of maybe I'm not as well informed as I need to be or as I should be. And especially when we're bringing that idea of the power dynamic back into play, an employee talking to a supervisor, when they do have the courage to bring something to the table and are shut down with that level of response. So I would say two things. One of the wisest people I know is my partner because she tolerates me and she tells me she's wise, no. She tells me a lot of times that it's intent versus impact. Your intent may have been this, but let me tell you what the impact is on me, on a group or what have you. So that's number one for me. The other part is being an expensive ally. What I mean by that is asking why. So someone, with Winston's example, someone's talking about diversifying having more women part of the board or having more people of color part of the board. I typically ask, well, why? And they look at me like I have two heads because I'm a person of color, but if you don't have a reason why, except for the fact that you're trying to placate me or it's the thing to say in the PC community, then we're not actually gonna get to be diverse because you're not gonna be the person that's gonna be able to recruit folks that wanna be part of this piece because folks are gonna see through that you haven't done your work and this may not be really important to you. So I typically always ask, so why are we doing that? And usually that first answer isn't good. So I ask again, why? And the up to ante on what we're trying to do around the work. So intent versus impact on the individual basis, but when it's talking about diversifying anything or working on these issues, I usually start off with why because there's always an assumption that I'm down for everything that's diversity. I'm down for good diversity work, good social justice work. I'm not down just to say we did it. Diversity is changing. As Winston said five years ago, we weren't talking about transgender to the level we're talking about it today. Also, if you noticed during the presidential election, President Trump hit on a group of individuals when he talked about the forgotten people. So we need to make sure we have spaces for forgotten individuals who apparently have been overlooked and not taken care of on our college campuses or in society. So none of us ever knows everything there is to know about diversity. We're continually changing face. And I think what's really, really important is that we do not allow our students to leave this campus without experiencing diversity. They need to step outside their comfort zones and get to know someone who is different from where they come from. Because if not, we have done them a disservice when they go into the work environment. That is probably going to look vastly different than the way Ohio University and Athens, Ohio look. So it's continually learning. It's continually feeding your mind, your body, your spirit about diversity. It's continually staying on top of the issues and listening to what's happening in society. I had not thought about the forgotten people. I really had not until this was brought to the fore. So now I'm thinking how do we as diversity and inclusion make sure we are serving everybody on this campus who continues to define themselves as a diverse individual? So the learning continues and the learning is real. We would like to take the remaining time to continue the conversation and continue the learning informally with each other. We have refreshments in the back. We have a wonderful social justice oriented display here in the library and we have these wonderful panelists that we can talk to for our remaining time together. But first, please join me. Sincerely thank you to each of you. Yeah. We really appreciate you taking the time to come talk to us and sharing your stories with us. We really, really appreciate it and I personally appreciate it as well. So thank you. Join us. Let's continue the conversation. There are still more questions so feel free to come up and have some conversation.