MSUM TOCAR Anti-Racism Team Steering Committee
October 3, 2003
Present: Abner Arauza, Ron Jeppson, Amy Phillips, Steve
Pletta, Wade Swenson, Warren Wiese, Tracy Clark, Phyllis May-Machunda,
Rebecca Vave, Donna Rosh, Yoke-Sim Gunaratne, Linda Palmer
Absent: Veronica Michael, Judy Peterson, Rose Bakke,
Brian Oxton, David Crockett
I.
Welcome and Announcements: There are two new
members joining the Steering Committee, Wade Swenson and Todd
Godlewski. Todd is replacing Ryan Sylvester. Ben Blair has
resigned from Steering Committee since he is retiring this year.
II.
Trainings:
·
The level III training will be Jan. 29, 30 and 31
and Feb. 5, 6, 7. Anita will contact everyone about
location as soon as that is finalized. We need all Steering
Committee members to attend.
·
The level II training is Oct. 30 (6-9pm), 31
(8:30am-4:30pm), and Nov. 1 (8:30am-5:30pm) in the CMU Comstock
room. Abner Arauza, Rose Bakke, Brian Oxton, Wade Swenson, Judy
Peterson, Todd Godlewski will be attending. Anyone else from
the Steering Committee is welcome to sit in on some of it as it
works with your schedule. Please let Anita know if you can
join us for lunch on one of the days.
·
There will be a level I training on October 8th
on MSUM Campus. It will be 8:30am-4:30pm at CMU Ballroom.
There are still openings available for the training. Group
decided that it should be publicized campus wide. Anita and
Phyllis will follow up with publicity. Donna Rosh will talk to
Bruce Roberts about whether there are students involved in Support
International that might want to attend. Linda Palmer will talk
to the RA’s to see if any of them would like to attend.
III. Campus Survey and
Multicultural History:
·
The Institutional Assessment will be initiated at
the end of October. A cover letter will be submitted with the
Assessment.
·
There is no longer any need for someone speak about
the campus survey process at the Arts and Humanities All College
Meeting on Oct. 6th. Dean Quigley will present the
assessment talking points in the meeting. With this
meeting presentations will have been made in all four of the All
College meetings as well as at the “Meet and Confers” of the IFO
and MSUAASF.
·
The Assessment Committee will have a meeting on Oct.
13th to finalize the revisions. The Assessment will be
submitted to the IRB as soon as possible and the committee hopes
to get affirmation to administer it by the end of the month. It
will probably take us a couple of weeks to administer to the
entire campus.
·
For Staff, Faculty, and Administration both an
electronic and paper version will be made available. Paper
copies of the survey will be turned in at Warren’s office. For the
electronic version, Phyllis will talk to Deb White about having
the survey to go through Les Bakke’s office. They already
have a program set up to administer it.
·
Student surveys will be given in paper form in the
classes. Group discussed method for selecting classes for survey
to be administered.
·
Warren has followed up with the list of gifts as
incentives for students and faculty for their participation. The
list of gifts so far is:
1.
Bookstore - for some gift certificate and shirts.
2.
Food Services - $100 worth of Gift Certificates
3.
Student Union – Probably in the form of Union Bucks but
not sure yet what or how much. Warren still needs to finalize
with the Student Union.
4.
Still need to follow up with the idea of free parking
permits and a free credit of tuition. Warren will follow-up.
·
Last year MnSCU mandated that each of the campuses
do a campus climate survey (20 questions). It was sent out
electronically and almost 600 people responded back. With the
data from this survey we will have some comparative data to use
with our current assessment. Phyllis will send a copy of this
survey to everyone on the Steering Committee after the TOCAR
survey is administered.
·
Multicultural History – Several students have been
working on collecting the multicultural history of MSUM. Group
discussed how to support the collection of multicultural histories
within their department without duplicating what has already been
done. Phyllis will send out a list of the kind of information
that is being collected and where some of the gaps are.
IV. Unit Updates:
Facilities Unit
·
Met Wed., October 1st. There are nine
people so far who have agreed to serve on the Facilities Unit.
·
Group discussed how to have more people trained in
the areas covered by the Facilities Unit. Asked that facilitators
talk to the Steering Committee about pursuing the idea of
developing an “in-house” level I training. Among GMW's it is
difficult to arrange for people to attend an all-day training.
Can it be condensed or cover the material over a couple of days?
·
Began talking about how we can begin conversations
about the issues and how racism plays out in the departments in
our unit.
Academics Unit
·
Group has met twice to do outreach planning. The
first meeting with everyone is scheduled for October 10th,
probably one of the only times that the entire Unit (currently at
20 members) will be able to meet together since it is such a big
unit. Academics Unit will probably need to divide into smaller
sub-groups.
·
Still working on getting the College of Business
folks involved.
Administrative and Alumni
Unit
·
Phyllis reported for the Administrative Unit. They
are still working on getting folks to participate on their unit
and have not yet had a full Unit meeting.
Student Support Unit
·
Warren recruited some new people to participate in
the training on October 8th. Hopefully some of those
folks will agree to serve on the Student Support Unit.
·
Linda Palmer has some students that are
interested in the Unit. Linda will give their names to Anita and
will talk to some of them about participating on the Unit.
·
Warren and Phyllis will talk with Linda Palmer
and together decide facilitation of the Student Support Services
Unit.
V.
Agenda for first meeting of Units: In the next
month every Unit should have their first meeting: Group
brainstormed ideas for items to include in the agenda for the
first meeting.
·
Who are we?
·
Structure of the Steering Committee and the Units.
·
What trying to do?
i.
Gather institutional history
ii.
Develop anti-racism plan for unit
iii.
Prioritizing the anti-racism plan
·
Communicate TOCAR mission and goals.
·
Include announcement about the SEED
Mentorship-Reading group. – Flyer with the information about SEED
and the kinds of things that the groups will read and study would
be helpful to have to give out to Unit meetings. Phyllis will
follow up with the Flyer for the SEED Program.
·
Review concepts from the training framework.
·
Begin on-going discussion about what racism means
and how we do we dismantle it.
When you set the meetings for your units, email Anita. She is
available to take minutes for each of the Units.
VI.
Other: Group discussed the need to have a regular
open discussion about racism and how it plays out in the
institution as a way of keeping focused on the bigger picture. It
is a struggle to talk about racism and how to dismantle it. It
was agreed that the Steering Committee spend 12:30-1:30 in each of
the monthly Team Meetings in this kind of open discussion. Each
of the Units are encouraged to include this kind of discussion in
their meetings as well.
Next Steering Committee Meeting will be November
7th, 11:30am-1:30pm at CMU 203. Please note the
earlier time.
Submitted by – Anita Bender
Anita Bender
