The new Racial Equity Leadership Institute (RELI) pilot program has gotten off to a flying start as its first meetings took place Wednesday, Jan. 30. RELI was formed to support the Diversify goal that was included in the President’s Strategic Plan presented in June 2017, and is co-sponsored by The Committee on Diversity and Inclusion (CODI) and the Student Government Association (SGA).
This program will offer students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to learn about racism and how to facilitate a conversation about this issue as a community. Melody Pannell, chairperson of CODI, explains that this program will “have healing [and] transformative aspects to it,” that will hopefully “transform our community.”
Senior Nicole Litwiller, who has helped Pannell facilitate the start of RELI, responded, “One of the ways I hope RELI can ‘transform our community’ is by allowing us to actually have conversations about race. This is a topic that a lot of people, myself included, are often afraid to talk about. We don’t want to offend people or step on any toes, so we stay quiet. We need to figure out how to have conversations with our community so that we can continue moving forward.”
Last school year, Pannell and Daryl Byler, Executive Director of CJP, co-wrote a proposal to Lumina Foundation in the hopes of receiving a grant of $100,000.
The grant drew about 300 applications with only three awards to give out, and unfortunately, Pannell and Byler’s proposal was not selected. At the time, there was no room in EMU’s budget to start a new diversity training, so the idea was placed on the back burner. During the summer of 2018, Litwiller attended a racial equity and diversity training and got the idea to start a similar program on EMU’s campus.
Pannell and Litwiller combined their ideas and experience with these types of programs and proposed starting a pilot program using faculty at EMU who are already well-versed in this area as trainers for the program.
At the start of the RELI pilot program, over 40 students, faculty, and staff expressed interest in participating in the program. At the first meeting, 30 participants came to learn about the program, and then broke up into smaller cohorts of ten for further discussion. At the first meeting, discussion questions posed to the participants included “Do you see a need for racial equity education and training within our campus community?” and “Are you aware of any negative attitudes or incidences that have taken place on our campus concerning racial equity?”
Here are some of the anonymous responses received: “I expect to gain some tools of how I can be a better advocate, ally, and educator”; “I am no longer satisfied with conversations that end with ‘well, we’ll agree to disagree’”; and “I’m looking forward to developing the capacity for the facilitation of racial conversations.”
The vision for the future of the RELI program is that it becomes a requirement for all EMU first-years to join a cohort of fellow students, faculty, and staff to receive this training, and to facilitate conversation about race in a safe environment on campus. The cohorts would meet four times a semester for the duration of two consecutive semesters.
Pannell explains further that “the trainers will be on campus, so if someone has a concern, even outside of the group, they can stop by [their trainer’s] office and say, ‘I’m wrestling with this’ or ‘let’s talk more about this,’” which would provide extra support to students within the context of discussing race and equity.
The next session for the RELI pilot program is set for Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 10:10 a.m. Three separate groups will meet in Hartzler Library room 304, Roselawn room 306, and University Commons room 176.
The pilot program will be evaluated at the end of the spring semester and is slated to be approved as a permanent program beginning in the 2019- 2020 school year.
