The Office of the President hosted its second Dialogue Across Grounds event in Newcomb Ballroom Thursday at 12:30 p.m. to engage students with diverse perspectives in order to foster an inclusive community on Grounds. Guests at the event discussed inclusion on Grounds and what they can do to create inclusive spaces for others.
The event series is part of President Jim Ryan’s student outreach efforts and takes after a University program of the same name, which ran from 2010 to 2017.
One of the two project managers of Dialogue Across Grounds, presidential fellow Jessica Harris, explained the goal of the events.
“The goal of [Dialogue Across Grounds] is to bring students together across lines of difference and also to build meaningful connection and dialogue, specifically around our idea of ‘community of trust,’” Harris said.
The program offered free lunch to around 20 guests who attended, who then broke into three groups to begin discussion.
Each group of around six students was led by a student facilitator from the Hoos Connected program who is given intensive training and takes a for-credit course — PSYC 1020 — along with the position. Hoos Connected is a weekly program aimed towards first-year and transfer students to aid their transition to Grounds. Programs such as Hoos Connected and Dialogue Across Grounds strive to generate greater engagement among students and establish common ground within the University community.
Seirrah Kors, one of the event’s facilitators and fourth-year Commerce student, explained that she chose to become a facilitator for the event because of the similarities between the event and Hoos Connected.
“We talk a lot about the same things like trust and vulnerability, and I wanted to do that in a different way, in a different platform,” Kors said.
The discussions began with icebreakers to allow group members to connect before engaging in discourse on inclusivity and belonging on Grounds.
The groups then discussed what inclusive communities are and what they can do to foster them.
Many guests explained they feel inclusion requires people to be open-minded and welcoming. Others added that inclusion requires people to self-advocate and look for inclusive communities themselves.
The groups then discussed communities on Grounds where they feel safe and included —
one member explained he feels included at the Latinx Student Center, which works to support Latinx students on Grounds while promoting institutional change at the University. Another student explained she felt most at home within her dorm community.
History PhD student Hao Chen explained he does not feel graduate students are a part of the University community, particularly in student organizations. He wishes the University provided more opportunities for graduate students to connect with each other. In 2020, nearly 7,000 graduate students made up the University’s student population.
“For graduate students, everyone’s just reading at home alone,” Chen said. “The only connection for me to campus now is when I come here to TA an undergrad course.”
Graduate students have very limited opportunities to meet other graduate students, with very few events or other outreach efforts being organized by the University, Chen said. There are, however, graduate and postdoctoral communities run by students, many of which are specialized to certain cultural groups. Despite this, Chen explained that as an international graduate student, he would like to see more done by the University to incorporate students like him into the University community.
“I would like to see more events,” Chen said. “I saw there are first-year, second-year dinners or parties, but, for graduate students, I don’t know another graduate student pretty much.”
Second-year College student Chloe Kienzle explained how studying at home last year — due to most classes being online as a result of the pandemic — has been a huge barrier to finding community and belonging on Grounds. Many students within the University share her sentiment, having found the isolation of virtual learning to be demotivating and detrimental to their mental and academic wellbeing.
“I feel like a transfer student,” Kienzle said. “But I don’t have the same community of being a transfer student.”
Understanding the challenges students who studied from home last year, the University has tried to integrate students into the student community through programs like Connect2Grounds, which is intended to facilitate second-year students’ connection to faculty and peers and provide community events similar to the first-year experience they missed such as fall convocation and block parties in the Runk Plaza and at Lambeth Apartments. Due to the pandemic, fall convocation — typically a rite of passage into the University for new students — was held virtually in 2021.
Kienzle said that she has had difficulty attaching herself to Grounds and finding a sense of belonging and felt that she has just been “thrown in” without any tips as to how to fit in.
Kienzle explained, however, that she enjoyed the event and felt it introduced her to interesting people.
“This was actually way more fun than I was expecting,” Kienzle said. “I made some friends in like an hour. I enjoyed this, and I feel like we also had a really productive discussion.”
Kors explained that the dialogue events are very informal, and as a facilitator, she simply sits and asks questions.
“We just foster an environment where people can speak openly [and] have a community of trust within that,” Kors said. “What happens in the group stays in the group.”
There will be three more Dialogue Across Grounds events this semester — the next event will be Nov. 9 from 12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in Newcomb Ballroom.
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