Leah Yao ’15: After its postponement to make up for lost class time due to snow days, Peace and Diversity Day (PDD) has been rescheduled to occur during two advisory blocks on Wednesday, April 16th and Monday, May 5th. Students will participate in one of the two advisory periods, which will consist of a student-run workshop within advisory groups.
Courtney Portlock, Director of Diversity & Community Life, explained, “Preliminary [workshop] assignments have been made based on twenty-four homeroom/advisory groups. Twelve groups will be assigned to either date.”
Portlock said that Peace and Diversity Day “was designed as a means of engaging students through workshops, activities, and discussion, with a focus on celebrating concepts of diversity, peace and their relationship to art.” Originally planned for February 20th, “student facilitators, faculty, and guest speakers prepared to lead the sessions throughout the day.”
Now scheduled for two advisory periods, the Peace and Diversity Day’s activities will be truncated and largely limited to one workshop per homeroom.
For Julianne Dones ‘14, one of PDD’s student leaders, “It’s disappointing that we don’t have the full day. I think having it split up might not have the same effect as a full day event.”
Lolo Lomax ‘14 said, “Although this is a pretty good alternative…It usually takes students at least an hour just to warm up to discussing aspects of diversity and get comfortable with expressing their opinions so it is hard to tell if these advisories will be worthwhile.” She continued, “without the full day, students cannot experience multiple activities and enjoy the things that many of the facilitators have spent so much time working on.”
Portlock noted, “One of the ways we simplified it is that students can no longer choose their workshops, but we have given advisors the chance to see what they and their advisees might want to learn.” She explained, “We had to be mindful that it didn’t impede on any instructional time, so we had to simplify the ways in which the groups were divided.”
“I think I am most upset about the fact that students can’t choose what activities that they want to do,” said Lomax. “Usually when students don’t have the option to choose what they want to do, they are less likely to look forward to what they are going to do.”
While there is an attempt to capture the spirit of PDD, Portlock acknowledged the student leaders have had reevaluate their expectations of what the students may get out of the day.
“Our expectations were that students would walk away with a very full understanding after the day, and now they are really just getting an appetizer,” articulated Portlock. “So we had planned kind of a full of course, and now we have made it so people can at least get excited and start conversations for when we will have a full day, which probably won’t be until next year.”
Portlock emphasized, “Students have invested so much time and energy and attended training on Saturday on their own time… and they had also put a lot of thought and planning into their workshop.” As a result, “We didn’t want to lose all that creativity and hard work all that dedication and motivation to have a conversation about what does diversity and inclusion really look like and mean.”