Anti-Racism Steering Committee Minutes

September 5, 2003

 

Present: Brian Oxton, Amy Phillips, Ron Jeppson, Judy Peterson, Donna Rosh, Phyllis May-Machunda, Veronica Michael, Abner Arauza, Rose Bakke, Yoke-Sim Gunaratne, Warren Wiese, Tracy Clark, Anita Bender

Absent: David Crockett, Ben Blair, Linda Palmer, Steve Pletta

 

Handouts given:

• MSUM Anti-Racism Team Structure
• MSUM Anti-Racism Team Units & list of their departments
• List of persons who have received Anti-racism training at MSUM - alphabetical order.
• List of persons who have received anti-racism training at MSUM – listed by departments.

 

Announcements:

• TOCAR received another two-year grant from the Bremer Foundation, which includes money to pay for some clerical support.  Anita Bender will be providing that support which includes taking minutes at the various TOCAR meetings.  You can email her at: tocar@mnstate.edu - which is the new email address for TOCAR on MSUM campus. 
• Riverland Community College received a grant from the Bremer Foundation through MNSCU to do anti-racism work on their campus.  They will be having a series of trainings the weekend of Sept. 26^th.  They have asked for someone from the TOCAR Collaborative to come and speak, give a “pep” talk, to their staff and faculty about the collaborative work to start out the weekend on Friday, September 26^th in the morning.  They will pay for hotel and travel.  Amy asked if anyone was interested.  No one was able to volunteer.

 

I.                     Schedule for Anti-racism Steering Committee meetings:  After some discussion about the length and time of Team meetings, it was decided that the meetings would continue to be slotted for two hours.  However, we agreed to start meetings on time so that we can finish as quickly as possible.   It was agreed to move the meeting up a half an hour – from 11:30 – 1:30pm. 

 

II.                  Attendance Policy:  After some discussion about whether or not to have an attendance policy the decision was to ask folks who regularly cannot attend, like David Crockett, to have an alternative representative to attend for them.  Amy will talk with David Crockett.

 

III.               Campus Survey:  The survey has been completed and Phyllis has forwarded it to the IFO for their next Meet and Confer.  It was decided that all of the Unions represented on campus should be contacted to let them know the survey is happening, to ask for their support and the process needed for their support.  Phyllis will be following up with each of the Unions. We would like to get feedback from the Unions by the end of the month before we send it to the IRB.  A student version of the survey will be sent to the IRB at the same time.  Phyllis will be sending out the final copy of the survey to all Steering Committee members.

 

Ideas for encouraging faculty, staff and student participation:

• Ask professors to open their class for students to take the survey during class. (20-30 minutes)  It would be ideal to have a couple of classes in each of the departments. 
• Ask Deans to encourage their faculty to participate.  There is a Deans meeting held each Tues.  Ron will talk to the other Deans during this time. 
• Talk with Deans about when they hold their Chairs’ meetings and ask them to encourage participation at that time.  Phyllis will follow-up.
• Have several members of the Steering Committee speak at each of the All College meetings to encourage faculty to volunteer to allow the survey to be taken in their classes.  College of Social and Natural Sciences meeting is Wed. September 10^th.

-         Warren Wiese will check calendar.

-         Judy Peterson will check calendar.

-         Rose Bakke cannot do Wednesdays but is willing to be there if the meetings fall on another day. 

-         A schedule of all of the meetings will be sent out for folks to check their calendars.  Anita will follow up and send out the schedule.

-         Phyllis will send out an email with talking points for discussing the survey in the All College meetings. 

• Go to student organizations for support.
• Everyone who is on the Steering Committee open his or her classes for the survey to be taken.
• Veronica Michael will talk to all of the students she meets with and encourage them to take the survey.
• Ideas for incentives participating in survey were to have all of the names who participated put into a drawing for:

-         Gift certificate @ bookstore.

-         A parking permit

-         One tuition free credit

-         Certificate or add on to Dragon Dollars for food at the Union.

-         Free tickets to performing arts events. 

-         Free tickets to athletic events for faculty. (All ready free to students)

Warren agreed to pursue these ideas and will bring information back to the next Team meeting. 

 

      IV:        Bremer Grant:  TOCAR received funding for another two years.  This gives      us the opportunity to offer further training.

Level I:  This intro training will be available for 40-50 more people to be trained.  The dates they are offering us are:  October 1, 2, 8, 29 and November 20, 21, 22.

 

Level II:  This training is scheduled for October 30, 31 and November 1, at CMU probably Comstock room.  There will be dinner on Thurs. and breakfast and lunch on Friday and Saturday.  Brian, Rose, Abner, Wade and Judy have not yet received this training.  Others who are interested can sit in on it again.  There will be new team members from other members of the collaborative. 

 

Level III:  This training is for all team members of each of the campuses.  It will help each team develop further and will help in planning the work on our campuses.  They did agree to make the training Thurs., Friday, and Saturday.  After meeting with the Collaborative the dates for Level III training will be January 29-31, February 5-7. 

 

V:         MNSCU Grant from Bremer:  We received a Bremer grant from MNSCU as well.  This grant will go to support a monthly reading discussion group for MSUM campus.  It is available for anyone who is interested. Meetings will begin in October.  Donna Rosh and Yoke Sim expressed interest in participating.   Participation in this grant will be followed-up in a separate meeting.  We will contact all who expressed interest in the follow-up meetings to the trainings last year.

 

     VI:       What else does the MSUM Anti-Racism Team need? 

• Students as members of the committee – Warren is working to get student participation.  Need a couple more meetings to decide student appointments but should have assignments by the October.
• A representative from the Business College.  Group suggested that we ask Wade Swenson to be a member of the steering committee.  Phyllis will follow-up with Wade.
• Participation from Presidents of Student Organizations – Abner and Warren will follow up.  Abner will contact particularly the student organizations of color.
• Representation from GMW. – Brian will think about who could be asked.
• Everyone should email Phyllis with suggestions and she can follow up with folks by next meeting.

 

VII:      Unit Meetings:  There may be different approaches for recruitment for each of the units but the chairs and current members should meet and get the process started.  Some of the questions to think about when you are putting together your unit teams are:

-         Who are the gatekeepers?

-         Who has influence?

-         Who is necessary to make change?

There are notes in the June 17^th minutes that will be helpful to everyone as they      plan and begin having their unit meetings. Those minutes are on the TOCAR website.

 

It was decided that each of the Units have a meeting (chairs and members already recruited) before the next Steering Committee meeting to plan the recruitment process and list of people you would like to invite, plans for the first meeting, and a date for the first initial meeting.  The list of potential members should be brought to the next Team meeting in case there are folks that still need the Level I training.

 

Members asked that an MSUM Anti-Racism fact sheet be prepared to use in the first meeting when new members are recruited.  The fact sheet should include such things as:

• How TOCAR got started.
• How many people on campus have been trained.
• MSUM anti-racism organizational chart, etc.

Anita will follow-up by putting together a Fact sheet to bring to the next Team meeting.

 

Next MSUM Team meeting with be October 3^rd, 11:30AM-1: 30PM, at CB208.

 

Submitted by,

 

Anita Bender