DEI for Dummies: Part 3

This is Part 3 of a three-part series, DEI in the Dormitories

The 200+ Resident Advisors who populate the University of Virginia’s undergraduate dormitories are required to put on several events for their hallmates and suitemates each semester. The RAs are given a small allowance for food for these get-togethers, one of which must have a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEIB) theme. For the DEI events, the RAs are strongly encouraged to consult a “DEIB Catering Guide.“

The 2024-25 edition of the Guide provides some pointers to keep in mind when planning a multicultural event. Food can be a great way to share a culture, but the handout warns, “We want to be aware of reducing a culture to just its food. Is there any additional lesson or discussion about the food and culture? Does this food have a larger cultural significance?”

The Guide helpfully provides a list of minority-owned businesses in the Charlottesville area that the RAs might consider patronizing: nine Black-owned businesses, three LatinX-owned, seven Asian-owned, one LGBQT+-owned, one Jewish-owned, and the Kindness Cafe, which “supports people with disabilities.”

Although they may not be minority owned, restaurants are listed that serve food of mostly non-White cultures: soul food, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Korean, Hawaiian, Indian, Turkish, Mediterranean. Somehow an Italian restaurant, Mona Lisa Pasta, made the cut. “This list,” states the Guide, “can be helpful if you are centering an identity group and would like to share more about the culture and cuisine.”

Few details escape the eyes of the student leaders of the Resident Advisor program, which defines its mission of making UVA dormitory residents feel included and welcome. They are especially attentive to the perceived needs of so-called marginalized groups.

Roughly 40% of college kids nationally suffer from anxiety, depression or some other mental illness. Record numbers claim to be afflicted by disabilities, mostly “neuro-divergence” such as ADHD or autism. Suicides are up. UVA itself was traumatized in 2022 by a mass shooting that killed three students and hospitalized two. UVA’s institutional response: create a sense of “belonging” by encouraging students to define themselves by their racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, and gender “identities” and to cleanse the environment of anything that might cause discomfort to members of these groups.

Not all student sensibilities warrant equal attention under the DEI regime, however. Discussion groups often encourage students belonging to favored minorities to recount instances in which they felt mistreated, misunderstood, or just left out. No comparable concern is shown to, say, Christians who take their faith seriously and feel barraged by the open advocacy of sexual promiscuity — handing out condoms like M&Ms and urging students to test regularly for sexually transmitted diseases.

Students, says Eddie, an RA quoted in the previous article in this series, say they are encouraged to “leave behind their religious values” and embrace the tenets of multiculturalism. The truth is, while the RAs’ DEI programs aspire to make UVA welcoming to favored groups, it marginalizes and isolates members of out-of-favor groups.

What seems missing from the exquisite sensitivity to “minoritized” groups is a sense that students can just come to UVA, mix with people of different backgrounds, and forge friendships all on their own without help from a nannying administration.

Programming expectations

Resident Advisors are front-line troops in the Ryan administration’s concerted effort to forge a “great and good” campus culture informed by social-justice principles. It’s not enough for RAs to reach out to hallway residents one-on-one, keep an open door, and lend a sympathetic ear. They are required to organize a series of events throughout the year. Expectations are laid on in a document entitled, “Residential Experience Framework: Resident Staff Programming Workbook 2024-2025.”

RAs must put on a program centered around a different “learning goal” each month, four over the semester. Ponder that a moment: RAs don’t just provide guidance. They instruct. They instruct approved content.

RAs must submit their proposed programs to Resident Life Coordinators (RLCs), who are administrative staff on the UVA payroll. RLCs will have three days to approve or deny the submissions. RAs who need ideas can refer to a “Programming Bank” with 80 pre-made programming plans.

The four mandatory events encompass:

• Community engagement — what it means to live in a thriving residential community;

• Inclusion and belonging — develop skills to “engage in positive behavior & respect towards others in their community, as well as develop an understanding, appreciation, and acceptance of individuals different from one’s self.”;

• Personal development — focus on emotional wellness, explore new ideas, new understandings, and identity. “Students will be able to articulate their identities and have an understanding of how identity impacts lived experiences.”;

• Career and academic engagement — develop important skills and build networks to advance careers.

Some “helpful ideas” for activities include considering programs that “educate residents on implicit bias” or discuss the ways “power, privilege, and oppression impact different marginalized communities.”

Residents receive extensive instruction on how to undertake the “DEIB programming” for events and activities on their halls. (DEIB = Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging”). DEIB is not to be compartmentalized in one-off sessions. It is meant to infuse all presentations.

A document created by the student Vice Chair of Residential Inclusion and Belonging describes DEIB programming as “an opportunity for residents to celebrate and learn about identities,” adding, “Every program is a DEIB program – [make] sure that ALL programs are inclusive and accessible even if DEIB is not the focus.”

Moreover, RAs must take care to speak correctly about identity. Thus, to take an example from the slide deck, it would be improper to ask a question this way: “Resident Hannah, we are having a Black History month program for February, can you share your experience of being black at UVA?”

“It is not the responsibility of someone from a certain identity group to share their experience,” the document admonishes. “It is your responsibility to create a space where people feel comfortable sharing, if they feel inclined to do so.”

For the benefit of newbie RAs, the author provided the following list of DEIB resources, all of which are loaded with DEI concepts.

• Mental Health Matters

• Celebrating Cultural Holidays

• How to Plan a DEI Program

• Inclusivity and You

• Know Your Privilege

• Supporting Trans and Non-Binary Residents

• Charlottesville Community DEI Resources

• Utilizing Student Affairs Resources

• Countering the Model Minority Myth

Advice in the “Programming Bank” prescribes how events should unfold point by point.

Regarding food events, RAs are told to “engage residents in a discussion while everyone eats. “Focus not only on the traditions, histories, or origins of the food, but also the flavors and how they may be different or similar to foods from the residents’ own cultures.”

Another “active event” suggests that RAs give participants six index cards and write the following words on the front: Race, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, Religious Identity, Ability Status, Economic Status. Flip over the cards and write a few phrases about what the word means to them and “how that identity has shaped their experience at UVA and in life.”

Source: “Programming Bank, 2023-24”

Yet another activity uses art to explore identity. Residents are instructed to create a painting that “helps them to identify, further explore, and connect with an identity that they hold, something that represents their experience holding this identity.”

The consequences

Exploring racial, sexual and gender identity is meant, with the best of intentions, to include members of groups that were once excluded from the American mainstream. However, UVA has presented no evidence that DEIB works. A case can be made that students feel no greater sense of “belonging” today than they did, say, ten years ago — perhaps less. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, to the contrary, the emphasis on identity has accentuated racial sensitivities and tensions, not reduced them.

Last year a controversy erupted over the racial distribution of RAs to the dormitories. Under the rubric of student self-governance, the SRs (senior resident advisors) designated which RAs were assigned to which dormitory. Ideally, from UVA’s point of view, RAs would be distributed fairly evenly by race, sex, gender, religion, and disability so each dormitory was “diverse.” But the decision-making process got tangled up with identity fixations.

Many Black and Hispanic students wanted to share the same buildings as others with the same identity. That created a problem — too many White RAs in the other facilities, thus not enough diversity. UVA housing administrators stepped in. In an opaque process that made a mockery of student self-governance, they told the student RA co-chairs to reorder the assignments to achieve a more desirable demographic mix and then report back to get approval.

UVA President Jim Ryan is scheduled to report to the Board of Visitors today how UVA is complying with its directive to eliminate racial preferences and DEI from UVA. After years of “inclusive excellence,” both are so deeply insinuated into UVA life that it will be impossible for him to provide a comprehensive response. Hopefully, he will at least touch upon DEI in UVA’s dormitories. Much work needs to be done.