A Call to Participate: Two New Committees of the Task Force on Campus Climate
November 30, 2023
Dear Trinity College Community Members,
We created the Task Force on Campus Climate (TFCC)—a multi-constituency group of students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni—three years ago with a charge of identifying and promoting ways to ameliorate factors that impede all members of the Trinity community from experiencing the campus as a safe, equitable, and inclusive environment. It is clear that when individuals feel threatened and unsafe, it negatively impacts mental health, as well as academic and work performance. In other words, there is a compelling need for the work of such a task force. When the TFCC began its work, nearly 300 people responded to the call to participate, ultimately leading to last year’s publication of Trinity’s Action Plan for Racial Justice.
Today, after consulting with current members of the task force, we are announcing the formation of two new committees that will identify and address gaps in support for: 1) LGBTQ+ members of our campus community, and 2) Arab, Jewish, Muslim, and Palestinian members of our campus community. We invite you to participate in this important work. Committees will begin in earnest in early 2024. If you wish to participate in one of these committees, please click here to express your interest by December 15, 2023.
Since its formation, the TFCC recognized that racial justice was the first, but not only, issue to address on Trinity’s campus. Consensus had built that the next focus of the committee’s work needed to be on the campus climate for LGBTQ+ members. The data collected in the College’s campus climate survey make it clear that members of the LGBTQ+ community do not feel a strong sense of inclusion and belonging at Trinity. Our recent 5-star Campus Pride Index score indicates the College has built a strong foundation for an inclusive LGBTQ+ culture; we want to continue our work in making our community one in which LGBTQ+ members can feel a full sense of belonging.
But focusing on one issue did not feel sufficient given the pressing needs of this moment. Hate against Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians is growing nationally, and rightfully students on college campuses are concerned about their safety, heightened by current world events and frightening increases in anti-Arab, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and anti-Palestinian sentiments, language, and acts. Therefore, members of the TFCC formed a second committee that will focus on these issues. Ultimately, we hope to be able to address the complex intersectionality of issues that create the aggregate campus climate.
Cultural change is an ongoing work in progress that often is neither easy nor fast, yet it is vital to fostering a community in which all can thrive. The ultimate goal of the TFCC is to provide sustained attention to our campus climate and to develop outcomes and metrics by which we may hold ourselves accountable to strengthen our community.
In 2017, when we wrote Summit, Trinity’s strategic plan, we set a goal to “foster an inclusive campus community that embraces diversity and complexity, engages across differences with integrity and empathy, and participates actively in the life and governance of the College.”
We continue this work today in support of students, faculty, and staff to advance our campus climate through deeply informed discussion, analysis, understanding, and action. We are truly grateful for all the great work that community members have put forth in supporting one another in difficult times. Let us continue to be the change we seek.
Sincerely,
Joanne Berger-Sweeney, TFCC Co-chair
President and Trinity College Professor of Neuroscience
and
Anita Davis, TFCC Co-chair
Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
