Dear St. Olaf Community,

The St. Olaf Working Group on Equity and Inclusion gathered for the first time on October 26. We began by asking each member to share why they agreed to serve on the group, and we were deeply moved by the personal experiences they shared and their devotion to ensuring that St. Olaf is a place where everyone feels welcomed and valued.

Anne Phibbs, the founder and president of Strategic Diversity Initiatives, then led us through a workshop titled Beyond Diversity 101: Micro-inequities, Implicit Bias, and Moving toward Equity. Anne challenged us to consider the ways in which our own social identities impact how we move in this world.

This training prompted important discussion among Working Group members, and several themes emerged that will help guide our work:

We need to listen to each other.

• Listening builds trust. We are ready to listen.
• To start the Working Group’s listening sessions, we will ask to meet with members of the Collective and the Task Force. We feel it is imperative to have an understanding of their experiences and concerns.
• We will be reaching out to other students, faculty, alumni, and members of the administration as well. We will establish other listening sessions moving forward, and we will also create a way that members of the campus community can regularly provide feedback and input to the Working Group.

Our approach needs to be strategic and sustainable.

• We are committed to identifying best practices and resources for increasing equity and inclusion at St. Olaf.
• As a starting point, we will immediately retain an independent entity to conduct a broad climate survey of our campus. The survey will provide useful information about the specific concerns and opinions of members of our community, and will also provide useful comparative data with surveys conducted at other similar institutions. We plan to survey community members during the remaining weeks of this semester and hope to have the results available in January. The survey will be conducted by the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium, and we will share the results broadly as we determine as a community how to address issues of equity and inclusion on our campus.

This work impacts all of us.

• Diversity, equity, and inclusion is about creating community. It also is about addressing systems of oppression, including both individual prejudice and institutional/systemic discrimination.
• We will review current policies and the campus environment to ensure that they support and foster a community that builds trust and is welcoming and inclusive.
• We are committed to providing open, honest, and timely communication after each of the Working Group’s monthly meetings. Our next meeting will be Monday, November 6.

We have a significant task ahead of us. There are no easy answers, and this work will be messy, difficult, and emotional. We are ready to do it, we are honored to lead this group, and we are grateful for your support.

Respectfully submitted,

Glenn Taylor ’73 and Phil Milne ’81
Chairs, Working Group on Equity and Inclusion