SELINSGROVE — Fifty to 100 Susquehanna University students are expected to march around campus carrying banners this afternoon, hoping to draw more awareness to what anonymous reports have indicated has been a problem of minority students being treated unfairly by biased professors.
Their destination?
The provost’s office, where they will present a petition of more than 200 signatures, along with demands that include professors receiving mandatory diversity training every other year.
Speakup, a student group consisting of six to eight individuals under the guidance of the university’s Center for Diversity and Social Justice, organized the rally in response to a lack of action when a smaller group of students previously made demands.
While the administration was supportive, according to student Katie Taylor, there wasn’t enough awareness or support among students and staff at that time for them to enforce mandatory training.
All week, the group’s demands have been displayed at the Campus Center, along with the petition for students, faculty and staff to sign.
Fewer than 20 incidents of bias have been officially reported to the Biased Response and Education Team at the university, Taylor said, but not a lot of people know about the team.
“While these things are happening, some of them are being reported,” Taylor said, “but probably a lot are not.”
“The most documented incidents have been against the African American population,” she said. Multiple times, a report claimed that a teacher was showing bias against an African American woman in his class by grading her unfairly.
Today, the provost’s office will present a letter explaining what BRET is about, Taylor said, along with six demands, including mandatory diversity training for faculty and staff, mandatory attendance by faculty at the annual Martin Luther King convocation ceremony and the establishment of a formal system through which students can submit incidents of bias that happen on campus to BRET, with separate and distinct reports for students and faculty.
The rally will begin at 1 p.m., and the march will begin at 1:30 outside the Degenstein Center. Participants will march down Academic Row, past the library, back up Academic Row and end at the office building.
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SU students to hold rally today
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