Staff and Faculty Sessions:
January 5-7 and 13-14; 9:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
January 12; 9 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

Student Sessions:
January 19-21, 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. – Noon – 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 – 5:00
February 9-11, 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. – Noon – 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 – 5:00

You will receive an email in mid-December asking you to rank three sessions that best fit your schedule. From there you will be assigned to a group that best matches your availability, and you will receive a confirmation email with information on how to join your assigned session via Zoom.

We believe that it is the responsibility of colleges and universities to help prepare the next generation of leaders who are capable of effectively connecting with people across differences. It is important for faculty and staff, who are charged with creating, supporting, and delivering that development, to acknowledge that we can’t teach what we don’t know. If we are to help foster this learning, we must be prepared ourselves.

We find ourselves in a particular contextual moment in our society, in which the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 has shined yet another light on the way that systemic racism plays out. We wish to create an opportunity for a foundational level set for all of our community, so that we can be prepared to transform our culture and our community into a space that feels more inclusive, respectful, and honoring across race.

Yes! This summer President Anderson and the leadership of the college made a commitment that everyone in every area of the college would engage in anti-racism training with an emphasis on listening and self-reflection. With this commitment in place, the college has created a campus-wide training program with the expectation that everyone will participate in this transformational educational process, which is designed to lift up and honor all of our humanity and build our skills and competencies for the ongoing work of co-creating an inclusive St. Olaf Culture.

No. We all learn around race. If you are a person who believes in equity and justice for all, then this space will be empowering to you. We’ve all heard, learned, and experienced messages around race since we were born, whether we’re BIPOC or White. This is a space to talk about and share these experiences.

This is part of what we get to grapple with and struggle with in this conversation. We will learn how to pay attention to what racism and racist behavior looks like, and what it means for us to be brought up in a system that has a racist background, and how that system informs our experiences. We can then ask ourselves how we can pay attention to our behaviors in a way that creates greater equity.

These antiracism training sessions have been designed to be engaging and interactive, despite being conducted in a virtual format. Content will be offered, but much of the learning will come through discussion and the sharing of experiences and curiosities. Everyone will engage in a conversation in a way that allows them to not only walk away with an understanding of how issues concerning race and equity play out on our campus, but to also walk away with tools they can use to continue the conversation around antiracism.