By Emily Christensen   |   Photo Julie Pagel Drewes ’90

When Wartburg College President Darrel Colson is asked about diversity and inclusion on campus, he will always go first to the college’s Diversity Statement:

“The Wartburg College community is committed to creating and maintaining a mutually respectful environment that recognizes and celebrates diversity among all students, faculty, and staff. Wartburg values human differences as an asset, works to sustain a culture that reflects the interests, contributions, and perspectives of members of diverse groups; and delivers educational programming to meet the needs of diverse audiences. We also seek to instill those values, understandings, and skills to encourage leadership and service in a global multicultural society.”

“It captures beautifully what we try to achieve: a mutually respectful environment that supports students, faculty, and staff in their diversity,” Colson said.

While defining those terms may be relatively easy, achieving diversity and inclusion is markedly more complicated. Many on the Wartburg campus will say the college has done a good job of achieving diversity in its student population. The college boasts 199 American-multicultural students, 115 international students from 53 countries, students from 30 states and more than 30 religious backgrounds, students with varying political views, and students who identify at points all along the human sexuality spectrum.

Ensuring that each one of the college’s 1,498 students feels welcomed on campus is where it gets tricky, said Krystal Madlock, Wartburg’s director of multicultural student services.

“I’m excited that as an institution we have moved from focusing on just diversity to that inclusion piece and that we are challenging our students, faculty, and staff to name it and claim it,” she said.

You Belong

Just days after the January 2018 incident, the Student Life team hosted a “Hate Has No Place Here” rally, which drew hundreds of students, faculty, and staff. Conversations continued into the spring and picked up again this fall, when the Student Life team once again took the reins, launching an even more comprehensive inclusion campaign called “You Belong.”

“The ‘Hate Has No Place Here’ campaign fit with what was going on at the time, but it was time to transition from dealing with an issue to talking about how we feel as a community,” Madlock said.

The “You Belong” campaign kicked off with an event during first-year orientation featuring a panel where students from varying backgrounds shared their experiences (both positive and negative) at Wartburg and how they came to feel a part of the community. Lindsey Leonard, director of student engagement, said this introduction to diversity on campus was meant to “prime them for the more difficult conversations to come in Inquiry Studies 101.”

“We wanted to be sure that our incoming students knew that their new community might look a little different than what they were used to. It’s an exciting change, but we knew it also might be a challenge for some of them,” she said. “We need them to understand early on that we hold ourselves to a higher set of expectations on our campus and that we are here for them as they learn to live in their new community.”

To ensure that all new faculty members also were prepared, additional training was provided during new faculty orientation. The “You Belong” campaign was then introduced to the entire campus in October.

Continuing the Conversation

Cassie Hales’ official title is director of residential life and chief student conduct officer, but she likes to consider herself a champion for diversity on campus. She sits on the Diversity and Inclusion Council and was one of many who had a hand in organizing the “Hate Has No Place Here” rally and creating the “You Belong” campaign. She also is an adviser for Alliance, the college’s LGBTQ student organization. Her role as an IS 101 instructor — her class focused on social activism — affords her the opportunity to help first-year students “question authority and challenge things from their own perspective.”

“For me IS 101 is a safe place for all students to have some really difficult conversations,” Hales said. “In regards to student development that is why I think IS 101 is so important to diversity on this campus, because we are allowing them, possibly for the first time, to embrace the fact that they are free-thinkers.”

While not every IS 101 class hits on such hot-button topics, Leonard, who serves as the IS 101 program co-director with Pam Ohrt, associate professor of journalism and communication, wanted to be sure the conversations they started in orientation continued through the Fall Term. The team decided the best way to do that would be to look deeper into microaggressions, which is defined as a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group.

“These are things our students are experiencing all too often, and even though they are unintentional experiences, we know they can have a big impact,” Leonard said. To that end, the IS 101 team brought in “Say What?!,” a diversity and inclusion training program, to provide an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff to have a straightforward conversation about microaggressions and how to handle them. The event was mandatory for all first-year students and was followed by an in-class discussion that allowed students to unpack some of what they discussed.

“We know our students will continue to learn about this for their whole four years. As faculty and staff, we are still learning. What we hope is that we are being more intentional about planting that seed so that when they are ready, they can water it and nurture it on their own,” Leonard said.

Push for Improvements Continues

For Colson, ways to improve diversity and inclusion are always top of mind.

“I know there are ways we blunder into our effort to be open and welcoming,” he said. “I don’t have a solution, but I know these are issues our students grapple with on a daily basis.

“We ought to be open to having lots of conversations about the needs of all of our students. We need to open up and learn from our students what we could be doing to better include and address their perspectives. These are often hard conversations to have, but I love when students tell us things like that because if we are going to invite them to our campus then we have to find a way to ensure they are included.”

Across campus teams are seeking new ways to add diversity to the faculty and staff. Madlock is working with the Diversity and Inclusion Council to re-examine the college’s Co-curricular Diversity Plan. The Community Response Team, which was first called into action in 2017, works to ensure meaningful, timely, and transparent responses to incidents of bias on campus. On the academic side, the Multicultural Diversity Studies Committee monitors and evaluates outcomes of educational programs related to multiculturalism and diversity.

“There is a lot going on, and this is one of the things that keeps me up at night,” said Dr. Dan Kittle, vice president of student life and dean of students. “We care about this not because of what is going on in the national spotlight, but because this is what we are about. We cared about it before it had public attention, and we will care about it until we can get it right. There are a lot of competing priorities right now, but we have to keep our eye on the ball.”