The Colby Echo

Issue date: 2/18/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Tate Kaneshige

Last November's sit-in included a list of demands from concerned members of the College community. While most protesters sat silently in the middle of Pulver Pavilion's main thoroughfare, others passed out letters with demands of the administration and the Student Programming Board (SPB) and challenges to the larger student body that are now familiar to many in the community: "To challenge this unacceptable atmosphere, we are protesting the failure of the Colby community to LISTEN and be moved to make substantial change on campus […] This is our last day of silence."

Members of the administration, faculty, staff and student body have been working together to address these demands and have recently released a document titled "Engaging Dialogue: Improving Campus Climate." According to the document's opening paragraph, it "addresses the issues and concerns raised by students and submitted to administration November 6, 2008, as intended to increase cultural awareness and administrative transparency."

The document, according to Coordinator of Multicultural Student Programs and Support Joe Atkins, "does not represent a conclusion, it's a beginning. It's a working document, it's meant to point us on a path in which all students will have an ability to contribute to evolving the campus climate in a way that it serves everyone in the best way possible." It includes some general statements about the College's commitments to diversity and intentions to generate change, as well as specific examples of how it plans to do so.

Most notable among the document's outlined "immediate tangible programmatic changes" and "ongoing enhancements to campus culture" are plans to improve communication between SPB and the Pugh Community Board (PCB), enhance the Campus Conversations on Race (CCOR) program, make orientation more inclusive and continue to develop the Multicultural Literacy academic requirement that faculty began working on last August as part of the ongoing Curricular Planning process.

Tiffany Martin '09 and Paolo Pepe '09 were the two students involved in constructing the "Engaging Dialogue" document. They said that the group-including Atkins, Associate Dean of Students Noel James, Director of Campus Life and Assistant Dean of Students Kelly Wharton, Assistant Director of Campus Life Jessica Dash and Professor of Education Mark Tappan-began meeting in December and then met three times over January. They discussed the content, phrasing and distribution of the document, going "paragraph by paragraph" to make sure it was to satisfaction.

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