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The review period for Syracuse University’s five-year Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility plan was initially planned to conclude on Monday, but was extended to run until Dec. 3.

In the plan, the university provided goals for addressing a variety of issues on campus. But some of the suggested revisions did not lay out how they would remove biases from campus.

The review period allows students and faculty to express comments and concerns with the DEIA plan, which was released on Oct. 18 by a task force created in the wake of the #NotAgainSU protests. 

The task force said in the plan that the university held external and internal reviews to better gauge their commitment to DEIA, which led to the five-year DEIA plan. 

On Nov. 10, SU’s Student Association held a town hall to discuss the DEIA plan, which many members and students said was not adequate to address the real diversity and inclusion problems at SU. 

The plan acknowledged how the #NotAgainSU protest and the murder of George Floyd showed how not enough is being done on campus and in society to support diversity and inclusion.

The task force noted the plan will not be accomplished within five years but provides a starting place for improving DEIA on campus. 

Maya Goosmann | Digital Design Director

The task force outlined five key goals for the plan: 

• Enhance campus climate to create a sense of belonging for all
• Recruit, support and retain diverse students, faculty and staff
• Advance institutional infrastructure-related DEIA learning, professional development and civic innovation
• Elevate DEIA across the academic institution, transforming the university’s approach to scholarship, research, pedagogy, curriculum, programs and services
• Practice an inclusive understanding of accessibility. 

The task force plans to implement this plan, which is broken up into 5 sections, by asking the community to engage with the plan and offer critiques and ideas before the plan is given to SU’s next chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Section One 

In the first section of the plan, the task force explained how the DEIA framework and implementation is a reflection of SU’s core values and goals. 

SU said it wants to be recognized as a leader in DEIA. The task force emphasized how the plan will be transparent throughout the process, and the team said it hoped SU will work on retaining underrepresented groups on campus and raising funds to fast-track the implementation of the DEIA plan. 

Section Two 

More than 30 racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic incidents occurred on campus starting in November 2019. In response, the Board of Trustees Special Committee on University Climate, Diversity and Inclusion tasked an Independent Advisory Panel of four national DEI experts, who commissioned former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to evaluate campus police. The Special Committee released their final report on March 4, 2021. 

Despite the setback of COVID-19, the special committee took to Damon A. Williams — a member of the independent advisory panel commissioned by SU’s board of trustees special committee on university climate, diversity and inclusion — and his Center for Strategic Diversity Leadership and Social Innovation to answer questions about diversity and inclusion at SU. 

With this research came five main themes that the university used in their rationale for this plan, which include a campus of perceived fear and personal experiences of bias, leadership challenges and a lack of DEI skills, plans and commitments. 

The committee found that Black students were 4.6 times more likely and Hispanic/Latino students were 2.4 times more likely than white students to report experiencing discrimination. Female faculty were about twice as likely as male faculty and faculty with disabilities were 1.86 times more likely than faculty without disabilities to report feeling discriminated against.

Section Three 

SU’s task force said in the draft plan that the university has already made numerous multimillion-dollar investments in diversity and inclusion programming. According to the draft, SU has made “fulfilled, completed or made substantive progress” in 49 out of 50 campus DEIA commitments. 

“Overall, Syracuse University has been and remains committed to improving campus climate and relations among different campus constituencies over time,” the plan said. 

The university created a position of chief diversity and inclusion officer in 2018, which Keith A. Alford took over in May 2019. Alford left the position in August, but the university has not yet replaced him. 

In 2020, the university created the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which oversees all DEIA concerns and commitments on campus with four current full-time employees. 

In the plan, the task force proposed expanding the number of full-time employees in the office to 10 to 12 and increasing the budget to account for the increase in employees. The task force also recommended implementing a full-time executive director of DEIA. 

The task force said the $50 million investment from SU’s Board of Trustees in March will go towards faculty retention and diversification in hiring. The task force also said the university strengthened its commitment to DEIA through their new first-year seminar course. 

The university allocated $500,000 to the Office of Student Living to hire a new assistant director of diversity and inclusion, as well as the addition of four new counseling positions and four BIPOC counselors. According to the plan, three or more of the hired counselors are bi- or multilingual. 

The plan said that the university’s redesign of the Schine Student Center in 2020 was part of its commitment to DEIA. Schine offers a welcoming and accessible environment for students to congregate in addition to the Intercultural Collective — which includes the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Disability Cultural Center and the LGBTQ Resource Center — according to the plan. The university also invested in the new National Veterans Resource Center to better serve veterans on campus, the plan said. 

SU’s Disability External Review Committee gave the university several ways it can be more accessible for people with disabilities, many of which will be of no cost, although the plan did not outline what these recommendations were.

According to the plan, the chancellor is using SU’s Forever Orange campaign to increase financial aid packages for students, including international students. The university also increased The Greater China Alumni Endowed Scholarship Fund by $50,000. 

“These new efforts to expand the university’s DEIA capacity are part of the key actions that we will take to embolden DEIA efforts at Syracuse University over the next five years and beyond,” the task force said in the plan. 

Maya Goosmann | Digital Design Director

Section Four 

The university will create dashboards to track its progress for each of the five goals outlined in section one of the plan to be transparent and keep the university accountable, according to the plan. Section four of the plan outlined each of the goals, their accountability partners, objectives, strategies and metrics. SU launched a bias incident tracker in the wake of the #NotAgainSU protests on the DPS website. 

Goal One: Enhance campus climate to create a sense of belonging for all

The task force explained the strategies that SU can take to enhance the campus climate. The university will work to create a complete DEIA orientation for first-year students and respond to DEIA societal changes. This can be measured by the number of conversations about things happening outside of the SU community, the plan said.

The university plans on expanding the Intercultural Collective, securing accessible housing for students and creating theme-based and gender-inclusive housing available for all students.

The university will communicate to certain communities to outline DEIA actions and progress. It will hold town hall meetings to address issues and concerns with the campus climate.

The task force said SU will create a bias coordinator for every home college or major. 

The task force said the university is going to continue hosting events for international and domestic students to socialize with one another. The university will connect domestic and international students during and prior to orientation, which will create peer-led teams for international students with the aim to improve language skills and integrate into the community. 

The university will have a permanent installation to acknowledge the university’s presence on ancestral land by 2024.

Goal Two: Recruit, support and retain diverse students, faculty and staff

The university plans on making the admissions pool more representative of a “diverse college-going population for each program.” The university also plans to diversify the student populations by recruiting at college and career fairs, finding grants and gifts outside of federal aid for better financial aid packages and creating outreach programs with Indigenous student initiatives. 

SU also plans on increasing graduation rates by developing a demographic dashboard for each college, increasing student support systems and normalizing accessibility and neuro-diversity help for students.

The university plans to hire a faculty diversity recruitment specialist, create a postdoctorate to faculty pipeline for graduate students, establish faculty exchange programs, incentivize colleges to increase DEIA in faculty and staff hiring, and identify what is holding the university back from hiring a diverse staff.

Goal Three: Advance institutional infrastructure related to DEIA learning, professional development and civic innovation

SU’s objectives for goal three are for the university to provide DEIA professional development and intensive training for students, faculty and staff and increase university community civic engagement.

The task force said the university plans on accomplishing these objectives by holding mandatory DEIA development for faculty and staff. The university also plans on requiring Diversity.edu modules, explaining requirements for DEIA knowledge and abilities for faculty and staff. SU also plans to decrease the number of STOP Bias reports.

SU will also use results from reviews and assessments to revise the FYS 101 course and offer more group discussions.

Goal Four: Elevate DEIA across the academic enterprise, transforming our approach to scholarship, research, pedagogy, curriculum, programs and services

An objective for this goal is to completely remove oppressive and non-inclusive practices at SU. The plan did not formally lay out how this revision will happen or how they will completely remove bias in these structures.

The university plans on increasing funding to strengthen DEIA in these structures, but the plan did not specify how much and how it will obtain this funding.

The university also plans on tracking the number of DEIA-certified courses, but it did not specify how it will track them or qualify a course as being certified. SU will also integrate DEIA programming onto DegreeWorks, but it did not specify what the individual requirements will be for each student or how DEIA will be integrated.

Goal Five: Practice an inclusive understanding of accessibility

SU’s objectives for this goal are to exceed accessibility standards, increase accessibility funding, develop inclusive student housing, create programs for neurodiversity support, remove communication barriers to ASL and CART, or real-time captioning, and remove barriers for students who need access to academic services.

SU created a multi-year physical access plan on data analytics, according to the plan. SU also plans on accomplishing the objectives by developing and implementing SU’s accessible design standards, funding disability-related requests, finding accessible housing options, evaluating residence halls, upgrading facilities and including places for service animals in a gated area on campus.

SU also plans on expanding the OnTrack program, hiring three ASL/CART coordinators and interpreters, assigning tutors to lower-level courses, creating an ITS accessibility center, finding a director of digital accessibility by 2022 and expanding transportation from Main to South Campus. 

The university will track the external reviews that focus on accessibility on campus, but the plan did not say when these will take place or by whom. SU will track employee and student accommodation requests as well.

The university also hopes to have South Campus facilities at 95% capacity by 2024 and will increase the level of satisfaction for residents who live on South Campus. The plan did not specify how it will increase satisfaction among students other than sending surveys.

Section Five

In the final section of the draft, the task force focused on accountability.

“Looking to the future of our DEIA efforts, we know that our culture of creativity, independence and decentralization can be both our greatest strength and a significant challenge,” the task force said in the plan.

The task force said all colleges and major programs should create their own five-year DEIA plans by January 2022. The plan explained how SU should have an activation leader for these DEIA plans to oversee the process for university departments.

Each university department should also produce a DEIA report every year to be submitted to the Office of the Chancellor. These reports will undergo an “intensive accountability review process” by the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Office and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the plan said.

University departments should also evaluate DEIA in their current programming to look at the design of DEIA roles and positions, faculty and staff, their individual DEIA budgets, their committee memberships and their strategies for DEIA.

Along with their reports, departments should also develop performance reviews that take into account SU’s DEIA plan. The task force said SU should also host an annual DEIA learning and accountability forum.

Finally, SU should have an external review conducted to assess the campus climate and the implementation process of the DEIA plan in 2023, the plan stated.

“We are in constant exploration to build upon our commonalities as we constructively work through challenges that may confront us,” the plan said in its concluding paragraph.

Published on November 15, 2021 at 1:18 am

Contact Shantel: sguzma01@syr.edu | @shantelguzman2