SA Community Life Committee

SA Residential Life Committee Meeting Minutes
Oct. 16, 2012
GSH 181
4:30–5:30 PM

Student Assembly Residential & Community Life Committee Meeting Minutes October 16, 2012 4:30pm — 5:30pm Goldwin Smith 144

Announcements

• People’s School — Thursday @ 10 AM-4:30 PM, Arts Quad
  • Discussion on rape culture to specific policies to diversity initiatives
• Campus Lighting Survey — Oct. 25
  • 3 teams (North, West, Collegetown)

Walk with team and pick out spots that are poorly lit and/or lacking walking accessibility RSVP by Oct. 23

Cornell Responds Presentation�Patricia Nguyen (Director of A3C, Assistant Dean of Students)

• “Community conversations addressing bias”
• Cornell Responds aims to provide an educational and restorative community response to help the campus react, process, and address bias incidents
• It’s just a band-aid for now in terms of looking at bias
• Disclaimer
• This can’t just depend on “goodwill”

Student advocacy is priority here (don’t care what admin thinks) This is an anti-institution institution Ethical concerns Need to realize reality of what is Cornell culture

• What we have done/do:
  • Alert staff
• i.e. Sigma Pi incident
  • Workshops/Facilitated Spaces
• i.e. responding as an aspiring white ally, understanding campus climate
  • Planted staff in protests and in Sigma Pi to educate
• Collect observations; focus on isolated incidences
• Communicate student demands to Skorton/admin
• Provide students will language and tools to voice opinions in times like this
• Four areas we work in
  • Advising administration
  • Informing affiliated staff and faculty
  • Educational programming
  • Support student response
• ResLife Committee Discussion
  • Freshmen need to be more educated on processes of Bias Reports, etc.
  • Hall Councils are solely programming, but not equip to do educational programming
  • Cornell culture is really focused on expensive and fun programming

Residence Hall Staff Training

• Current RA Training
  • Week long training
  • Go over different issues
• Racial issues, alcohol/drug use, student-to-student communication, gender identity issues, etc.
• Very lecture based
• Student staff training diversity curriculum
  • 1–2 semesters — ally training
  • 3–4 semester — micoaggressions training
  • 5+ semester — co-facilitate microaggression training
  • Microaggressions training is new
• Improvements
  • Not as lecture based
  • More interactive, with feedback
• Not as much sensitivity training for first year trainees; got it second year of training
  • More lectures
  • More action based activities

Packet given to RA with all resources (contact info, blurb, etc.)

• A week long, information packed - Can’t recall everything

There is only so much time to train each level so introducing new initiatives is hard

• Right now have ally and microaggression training

Need to keep things fresh

• Different speaker each year
• Different slides

Summary of Issues

• So little time
• Lack of practical applications
• Problems with content and who receives what training and at what time
• Follow up training

Next Week: Tuesday, Oct. 23 @ 4:30 PM