Holding Ourselves Accountable
PARC's definition of accountability:
“Accountability means making the choice to be vulnerable and challenge your pride, accepting responsibility for your actions and acknowledging your place in the cycle of privilege and oppression (institutional, ideological, interpersonal, and internal). Accountability is about continually setting and holding both yourself and others to a common expectation by clearly defining the team’s values and goals.”
At PARC, we acknowledge that we always have room to learn, grow, and do better. We are grateful for our community's support, feedback, and collaboration in this ongoing process. If you'd like to learn more and/or contribute to our process, please explore these links:
- PARC's Anonymous Feedback Form - this short feedback form includes the option to share your name for a response or remain anonymous. The feedback shared here will be read by the professional staff and may be shared with the full team or certain team members as appropriate to learn and make changes. If you'd prefer to give feedback about PARC to someone outside of PARC, our office reports to Andrea Dine, Assistant Vice President of Student Affairs. Her email is: dine@brandeis.edu.
- PARC's Annual Reports - since the Office of Prevention Services and the Brandeis Rape Crisis Center merged into the Prevention, Advocacy & Resource Center (PARC) in July 2018, we have released an annual report each academic year detailing our accomplishments and aggregate data.
- PARC's Response to Anti-Blackness - read the PARC team's response to anti-Blackness, which includes some action items for each semester beginning Fall 2020. We will revisit the plan every semester and updates on our progress and new goals on a semesterly basis, at minimum:
- Suggested Language List - developed as part of our Spring 2021 update to our Response to Anti-Blackness and in connection to our Bystander Training Levels 3 and 4, the Suggested Language List is a compilation of suggested alternatives to words and phrases with roots, histories, and/or current usage that can serve to reinforce systems of oppression. This list is always growing based on suggestions from the community. We encourage folks to use the list as a learning tool and decide for themselves what words or phrases they want to use or not use.
- In August 2021 this list was renamed Suggested Language List from its former name of Oppressive Language List. We did this in an attempt to center the suggested alternatives rather than the words and phrases that may cause harm.