PARC's Response to Anti-Blackness, Spring 2021 Update
On February 4th 2021 the PARC team shared this update to our Response to Anti-Blackness with our listserv:
Oppression is the foundation upon which violence is enacted-- whether that be sexual or relationship violence, racialized violence, institutionalized violence, or any other type of violence. Acknowledging how interconnected our work must be, PARC seeks to stand in solidarity with the student orchestrators of the Black Action Plan and contribute to addressing the concerns. This plan references goals first shared by PARC in their August 2020 e-newsletter, updated with information about progress and additional goals. This plan will continue to be revisited by members of the PARC team and shared with the Brandeis community on a semesterly basis at minimum.
- Prevention
- Actively consider and address anti-Blackness in all training and event planning.
- Commit to challenging oppressive language in ourselves, our programs, and our community, including incorporating our Oppressive Language List into our Bystander Level 4 training and making it available on our website.
- Continue to learn and discuss how intersectional anti-violence work is our foundation by requiring ongoing reading and conversations as a team and a willingness to admit and learn from our mistakes (acknowledging that reading is not the same as doing, but is an important element of ongoing learning).
- Advocacy
- Affirm to our community that as a resource that is designed around sexual and domestic violence, we cannot do our work without also working to counteract all violence and oppression.
- Strive to provide culturally humble support to our community, acknowledging that we don’t know what we don’t know and that making assumptions will not help us empower those who have experienced violence.
- Centered Fall 2020 Team Retreat (via Zoom Saturdays August 29th and September 5th) on training and conversations regarding intersectionality and accountability.
- Resources
- Decenter whiteness in our work and our resources by expanding our resource library and training materials to include more BIPOC and LGBTQ voices.
- Commit ourselves to learning and incorporating tenants of restorative justice and transformative justice as options for non-carceral and non-punitive options after violence, both internally and externally.
- Aim to hire and retain a team of professional staff, peer advocates, and violence prevention educators that is representative of our Brandeis community by advertising openings intentionally and improving transparency around hiring processes by hosting open information sessions.
- Intentionally hired 9 new student staff members for January 2021 to better reflect the needs of our community.
- Continue to work on addressing bias in hiring processes by asking ourselves and each other these questions throughout the interview process:
- Who could grow from this position?
- Who could bring a new perspective or connect us to new communities within Brandeis?
- How are my unconscious biases showing up in this process?
- How can I call in others in this group around their unconscious biases?
- Continue to improve our website to ensure information about us, our work, options, and resources are as easily accessible as possible.
- Center(ing our Community)
- Created an ongoing Accountability Sub-Committee of professional staff and student staff in Fall 2020 to evaluate the PARC team’s progress on these goals, solicit community feedback, and develop new goals. The Fall 2020 Accountability Sub-Committee is: Sarah J. Berg, Juan Bordón, Hannah Defay, Lexi Foman, Ali Hagani, and Vilma Uribe.
- Revised our anonymous feedback form and promoted it more intentionally during our events and presentations and on the home page of our website.
- Updated and expanded this document, PARC’s Response to Anti-Blackness, for Fall 2020.
- Planning for Spring 2021 feedback forums to solicit feedback on our work from students at large as well as club leaders in particular.
- Continue to center dialogues around the role of identity, positionality, and intersectionality in anti-violence work during new team member training, ongoing team training and retreats, and in the day-to-day functioning of our program.
- Incorporate new perspectives in our work, especially events and programs, by collaborating with different clubs and offices.
- In Fall 2020, we collaborated with Student Sexuality Information Services, Gender and Sexuality Center, Girl Up, Latin American and Latino Studies, Graduate Student Affairs, the Queer Graduate Student Union, Women in Science Initiative, The Center for Spiritual Life, and the Bridge-to-Wellness Peer Educators.
- Build meaningful relationships with culture clubs through supporting their programming and having a strong, supportive presence at their events.
- Solicit feedback from community members such as the ODEI student advisory board and club leaders.
- Created an ongoing Accountability Sub-Committee of professional staff and student staff in Fall 2020 to evaluate the PARC team’s progress on these goals, solicit community feedback, and develop new goals. The Fall 2020 Accountability Sub-Committee is: Sarah J. Berg, Juan Bordón, Hannah Defay, Lexi Foman, Ali Hagani, and Vilma Uribe.