Dear everyone
As many of you know or have heard, at the regularly scheduled bi-weekly meeting of the AntiRacism Consultation Committee (ARCC) on Monday June 20, 2016 over 110 students were in attendance to compel the faculty and I to understand, examine, and ultimately improve the experience of MSW students of color in their fieldwork experience and the academic progress consultation and review process when they occur.
Students' descriptions of their experiences and observations speak to our institutional assumptions and practices that impact all students but carry a particularly damaging impact for students of color.
These assumptions and practices manifest in how much or how little we have sought to identify, understand, evaluate, and mitigate the extent to which racism, privilege, and their intersections may be at play in the field education experience, especially when students of color experience difficulty in their field learning, or when they are asked to participate in the academic consultation and/or review process. In a recent meeting with Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming students, similar issues were raised regarding their experience in field learning.
The two hour ARCC meeting was attended also by Associate Dean Peggy O’Neill, Associate Dean Idene Rodriguez Martin, Associate Director of Field Katelin Lewis-Kulin, Sotomayor Fellow Mamta Dadlani, and ARCC faculty representative Rory Crath. We have since met with the entire resident faculty of the School to inform them of the content of the ARCC meeting and to identify next steps.
On behalf of the ARCC, I am asking all students, resident and part-time faculty to come together on Friday June 24th from 1:15-2:15pm in the Caroll Room of the Campus Center. Because the issues that have been raised are systemic, it is important that we all are informed about them.
The purpose of this meeting is:
- To demonstrate the faculty and my responsibility to understand and change our institutional assumptions and practices to thwart and mitigate racism and oppressive forces as they are at play within the field education experience, including and academic review experience.
- To be responsive to the students’ call for justice and to acknowledge that the set of demands presented to the school are rooted in the painful and hurtful experiences that our students have had because of our institutional assumptions and practices.
- To ensure that the faculty and I have captured fully and accurately the most pressing and salient targets of change.
- To create a way forward for our School community to identify the changes that we want and need to see.
At the meeting, I would like to reflect back a summary of the key themes that the other administrators and faculty heard across all the student comments made during the ARCC meeting. There will be a chance for questions and comments. One goal of the meeting is to get feedback from students to ensure that we as a faculty are portraying the student issues as accurately and completely as possible. Although not precluded, we did not want to ask students to repeat narrations of painful experiences.
Following this 60 minute meeting, the resident faculty will convene a special Faculty Meeting to identify next steps including identifying preliminary goals and objectives to which once finalized we would be held accountable by the ARCC review and monitoring process.
The faculty and I will provide a written summary of the draft action plan to the School community by July 5, 2016 and solicit feedback regarding this plan before it is put into motion. We have created this link where any member of our community may post
- additional comments about important factors that should be taken into consideration
- additional examples of the ways that our assumptions and practices have impacted members of our community
- questions about any aspect of the process
- feedback about the draft action plan and/or suggestions of additional actions that can be taken
- other
You will have the option of including your name or posting anonymously. We ask that all posts reflect a professional and respectful tone to be of maximal utility.
Our anti-racism commitment asks of us now that we as an institution are open to understanding the ways our practices have hurt members of our community despite our good intentions and that we persist in making large and small changes to constantly address these problems. The faculty and I will pull together and in collaboration with our students, adjuncts, and advisers to continue to evolve as an anti-racism organization.
In peace and love,
Marianne
Marianne RM Yoshioka, M.S.W., Ph.D.
Dean and Elizabeth Marting Treuhaft Professor
Smith College School for Social Work
