BSA Response

The following is Residence Education and Housing Service’s response to the Black Students’ Alliance (BSA) list of demands following racist and hateful incidents on campus. We appreciate the opportunity to continue to understand the recent and daily experiences caused by institutionalized racism that negatively impact our residents’ experiences and feelings of safety on our campus. Thank you to BSA for the continued conversations about the demands and our role in creating a better and safer campus climate for minoritized groups on our campus. REHS will do this very important work to allow more students to feel safe and welcomed at MSU. Please know we do not see this as a final conversation or solution, but a first step in creating a community that is physically and emotionally safe, respectful and inclusive.

See the latest BSA Demands Response document after our most recent meeting with the BSA president.

• 1. We demand transparency to the entire student body and not just students in the residence halls.

  1. We demand transparency to the entire student body and not just students in the residence halls.
  We acknowledge that transparency leads to trust, accountability and a feeling of safety for our campus community. REHS would like to invite the Black Students’ Alliance and other interested student leaders to meet with our leadership team to understand this demand more fully. We are fully committed to creating transparency. REHS does not currently have a mechanism to communicate broadly to the entire student body, but we will investigate if there might be a mechanism in which the university would allow that level of communication.

• 2. We demand consequences to the students who create a negative environment inside of residence halls.

  2. We demand consequences to the students who create a negative environment inside of residence halls.
  In order to ensure a safe environment for the residence hall students, any resident who creates a negative environment inside of the residence halls or on-campus apartments should face consequences for their actions. Dependent upon the context of the reported violation, either REHS, the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE) or the Dean of Students Office would adjudicate the respondent’s violation of the On Campus Housing Handbook, Spartan Life, Anti-Discrimination Policy, and/or Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct Policy. In the situations where REHS would administer the discipline, we would use principles to ensure community safety, education and restorative practices where we would look to have the respondent make amends.

  REHS will also work closely with OIE, the Michigan State University Police Department and the Dean of Students Office to provide them any information that will help them with their investigations and/or judication processes. Further, we will work to better communicate to the residents of the halls and on-campus apartments the processes by which each of those offices investigates/adjudicates reports of racially motivated crimes of harassment and/or discrimination.

  REHS has a Federal legal obligation to uphold students’ privacy per the mandated law FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) which was enacted in 1974. Therefore, REHS, like all other offices on the campus, is unable to share outcomes and findings related to a specific student.

• 3. We demand Validation of the experiences of targeted communities even in the case where it may be perceived as not a bias incident by your standards.

  3. We demand Validation of the experiences of targeted communities even in the case where it may be perceived as not a bias incident by your standards.
  REHS commits to acknowledging the experiences of targeted communities in order to create an environment of safety and belonging. Therefore, REHS will validate the experiences of targeted communities in all instances. We understand that the impact of any incident of harassment and/or discrimination can be emotionally and physically taxing on the targeted community. We will ensure that no future communications would suggest a finding prior to the investigations being completed or might place doubt regarding the original reported incident. We will stand by the targeted community and offer support and resources (e.g., CAPS, MSU Dialogues, MRULE-ICA staff).

  In all reported instances of harassment and/or discrimination, staff are required to report the incident to OIE. OIE determines where there is a violation of the Anti-Discrimination Policy. Per our policy, REHS would develop a community response for each incident.

  Further, we will review our current response procedures to include doing tabletop training exercises and investigate how we might partner with students in this process. We will work with campus partners to review our procedures for incident response on an annual basis.

   

• 4. We demand action plan and training in place so that Residence Hall staff know how to respond to occurrence.

  4. We demand action plan and training in place so that Residence Hall staff know how to respond to occurrence.
  We believe that strong onboarding and training for all employees is critical to ensuring our ability to foster an inclusive community. We have compiled a current listing of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Training Initiatives that professional staff, live-in staff and student staff like Resident Assistants (RAs), Intercultural Aids (ICAs), and service desk receptionists have completed (see attached). We would be happy to connect you with our DEI team to review the content used in any of the trainings.

  We value our relationship with the ICA program who has helped to create and deliver content for the modules delivered to REHS student staff employees through the DEI ICA position.

  We will partner with the Neighborhoods Leadership Learning Community (Neighborhood Student Success Collaborative, Student Affairs and Services, and REHS) to review our current practices and work toward a revised action plan to help ensure that all residence hall staff know how to recognize and respond to an occurrence of hate, harassment or discrimination.

  We will also review our accountability measures should a staff member fail to follow through on responding to an issue of hate, harassment and/or discrimination.

  We will also work to better communicate to all residents that, should a student not feel a staff member has responded according to our protocol for bias/hate incidents (see attached), they can report up to any supervisor or our Associate Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Sharon Chia Claros.

• 5. We demand the No Hate Crimes Statement “Hate Has No Home Here” should be circulated and sent to students frequently and the university should take a clear stance on hate crime and bias instances.

  5. We demand the No Hate Crimes Statement “Hate Has No Home Here” should be circulated and sent to students frequently and the university should take a clear stance on hate crime and bias instances.
  Our “Hate Has No Home Here” is a foundation of what we believe residence hall living must be. We are currently in the process of expanding our inclusive community statement “Hate Has No Home Here,” which includes providing the logo on our website with a link to our commitment and value regarding hate having no home here at MSU, printing stickers to distribute at our hall and apartment service center desks, increasing the use of the logo on dining hall table tents, distributing posters throughout the halls with information on reporting instances of harassment or discrimination, and some concepts which we are still investigating, including door clings and stickers on bathroom mirrors. Finally, we are working to include the logo in our REHS email signature so that students will always have access to resources that will help support a culture of no hate.

  We also have recently revised our departmental values published in June 2019. These values included input from across the department at all levels. Staff resoundingly were committed to one of the values, which is equity. That value states, “Where we are committed to embrace diversity and practice a culture of inclusion and advocacy, so that every Spartan is appreciated and valued” (see attached).

  Further, our division of Student Life and Engagement is also committed to an environment where hate has no home here through its value “As individuals and collectively, we are committed to a mindset of inclusive and equitable practices. We will work toward creating an environment free of harm based on a person’s identity.”

• 6. We demand an official policy/statement on racial discrimination/intimidation, and that it be fully enforced.

  6. We demand an official policy/statement on racial discrimination/intimidation, and that it be fully enforced.
  In order to address the culture of the campus, REHS is committed to the institutional policy on racial discrimination/intimidation. As such, REHS abides by and adheres to the University’s Anti-Discrimination Policy.

  There are also resources, including an ADP User’s Manual, available on OIE’s web page.

  Further, the General Student Regulations also prohibit any violation of the university’s Anti-Discrimination Policy see GSR 2.06, 3.01, 3.02. The University Housing Regulations also have applicable prohibitions see UHR 1.6, 1.9, 2.1

  All Residence Education staff (including RAs, Assistant Community Directors, Resident Directors, Community Directors and Assistant Directors) are trained annually by the Prevention, Outreach and Education Department on the university’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, and the division of Student Life and Engagement, for which REHS is a part of, have made the explicit expectation that ALL staff are mandatory reporters of issues of harassment and/or discrimination that would fall under the Anti-Discrimination Policy. Therefore, every incident of harassment/discrimination of which our staff is made aware is required to be reported.

  Response/Enforcement:

  1. All incident reports filed with REHS are forwarded to OIE for review and to the Michigan State University Police Department.
  2. OIE determines whether there is a violation of the Anti-Discrimination Policy.
  3. If the incident report has potential policy violations in addition to the ADP, REHS works to adjudicate the case or works with the Dean of Students Office for adjudication.
  4. In-hall staff is trained to follow the Bias Incident Response Matrix (included in the “Incident Response Guide”) that is attached to this email.
  5. Per our response expectations, REHS staff implements a community response for every reported incident.
  6. REHS is represented on the university’s Incident Response Team.
  7. All incidents reported as harassment and/or discrimination also are seen by our associate director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
  8. We will investigate the creation of a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion student advisory committee for REHS that would review our practices to better serve the entire student body and in particular student from underrepresented populations.
• 7. We demand that each Hall Government plans and executes at least 2 diversity centered programs per year; this can be in collaboration with Neighborhood Black Caucuses.

  7. We demand that each Hall Government plans and executes at least 2 diversity centered programs per year; this can be in collaboration with Neighborhood Black Caucuses.
  We believe that education occurs inside and outside of the classroom. As such, we have embraced opportunities to educate our residents to be inclusive members of society. Because the hall governments fall under RHA as a tax collecting body, we are not able to mandate programs for the hall governments to provide. However, we are willing to advocate to RHA that they consider legislation that would tie a percentage of Hall Government funding to diversity, equity and inclusion programming as a part of their charter annually. If this becomes adopted, we believe this demand can be achieved. REHS is committed to developing our hall government and caucus advisors to engage actively with diversity programming in each building.

  We have included our programmatic plan with the RAs as part of our Residential Learning Model. Our department has been fully committed to educating our residents regarding issues of inclusive living and learning. We will review our current content with faculty, staff and student input.

  We will further commit that our associate director and assistant director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will increase their programmatic efforts with both staff and residents of REHS.

• 8. Increase of minority representation within leadership of REHS.

  8. Increase of minority representation within leadership of REHS.
  We acknowledge and are committed to increasing marginalized representation within the leadership of REHS. Our associate director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has been working with Human Resources to develop enhanced practices to solicit diverse candidates in the REHS hiring pool for each leadership position. To this point, REHS is continually working on the following activities related to diversifying our staff.

  Auditing Job Descriptions within REHS

  • Currently reviewing all job descriptions within REHS to ensure that there is language around DEI in the posting and to ensure that there is a desire for intercultural competency under the Desired Qualifications
  • Ensuring that all job descriptions have the enhanced equal employment opportunity (EEO) statement
  • Proposing/advocating for the divisional DEI value/practice to be included in the summary of the posting

  Working with SLE HR on infusing DEI practices in search process, specifically as we recruit potential employees

  • In the process of proposing a budget so that we can post on various racial/ethnic affinity groups
  • Will utilize the various racial/ethnic chambers of commerce in Lansing/East Lansing to recruit (Black, Hispanic, Asian, etc. Chamber of Commerce)
  • Will post applicable open job positions in the various racial/ethnic/LGBTQIA+ groups on Facebook
    • BLKSAP, Latinx Knowledge Community, API Knowledge Community, QTPoC in Higher Ed, etc.

  Working with SLE HR in consultation with the Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives to build our capacity to have an EEO advocate in all searches whose role will entail the following

  • Connecting with chair of the search committee and reviewing interview questions to make sure that on each round of the interview process, there is a question around DEI/intercultural competency and that the question is intentional and ties to the job role
  • During committee discussions throughout the life cycle of the search process, if bias shows up in candidate discussions during the meeting, the EEO advocate will name the bias and let the committee know that their statement should not be considered and educate the search committee on why that statement was biased and why the statement should not be a factor for hire (e.g., “I think this candidate is too young and doesn’t have the experience for the role because they lack professionalism – even if they have all the requirements.”)
  • Will be reaching out to the Office for Intercultural Initiatives (OII) to provide training for REHS Leadership group on this area

  Work with SLE HR, MSU HR and OII to retrieve underutilization numbers for various job classifications so that if need be, we can extend the application deadline

  This commitment is reiterated within our division’s review of DEI practices. In 2017, we were one of two divisions on campus that sought out to review our DEI practices and the full report offers many recommendations we are currently working to develop. Further, both our division and department have established DEI advisory committees made of a diverse group of employees from each area.