Elliot Steeves-
A brand new Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging questionnaire allows anyone on Gustavus Adolphus’s campus to directly contact the President’s Council for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging with any questions that they have about Gustavus’s DEIB policies, events, and other initiatives.
The idea for the questionnaire started in a very unorthodox place. Over the last few years, the PCDEI has sought to create several opportunities that Gustavus students, faculty, or staff members can attend either in person or virtually. One of the things that co-chair Thomas Flunker recognized was that not everyone could come to these sessions based on the time that they had.
“We decided to be intentional about reaching out to people,” Flunker said. “First, we went to food service. Dining service is always open during the day, and it is hard for them to attend things regularly.”
The DEIB was interested in what it could provide Dining Services to most benefit their workers. They also wanted to look for events that were feasible for Dining staff to attend. The idea was that Dining staff could share what their understanding was of the DEIB, as well as what they would like to see happen.
“We learned over J-term that Gustavus is all over the place when it comes to people’s understanding of DEI, and of the terminology,” Flunker said. “While we answered some questions from the Dining Service that day, we also got feedback from them. There were quite a few questions from them that we answered that we assume people just know a lot of the time.”
Coming out of the session, the DEIB questioned how to better gain resources for the Dining staff. They wondered whether they could collect more data about DEIB knowledge campus-wide regularly, and how to provide support and resources if there were more questions.
“There are themes and concepts that people just don’t know,” Flunker said. “At the same time, they probably won’t ask about it. There is a stigma a lot of times that, if you don’t know something about DEI, you probably shouldn’t ask that question.”
The new questionnaire is meant to allay these fears. It functions as a way for anyone in the campus community to directly ask a question that they have about Gustavus’s mission regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion to the PCDEI. The PCDEI periodically reviews the questions and will share responses in numerous ways around Gustavus.
Links to the form can be found on posters around campus. In particular, there is a link to the famous Once Upon A Potty posters used by groups such as the Peer Assistants in bathroom stalls.
Flunker hopes that this form can allow the DEIB to better gather questions from people about seemingly simple DEI concepts that they do not understand.
“The education part doesn’t have to be an event,” Flunker said. “We want to be more intentional about gathering questions from people, and about providing people with intentional and straightforward answers.”
For example, the DEIB received a question from the Dining Service about whether a recording of events could be made available.
“We’ve been having meetings forever, and no one thought of asking that,” Flunker said. “This is exactly what the work is. We want to make sure people understand what DEI is, and how to implement it.”
Ultimately, the PCDEI started trying to simply reach out to dining service and wound up doing something completely different. To Flunker, that was a rewarding process and one that stuck true to the mission of DEI at Gustavus.