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Diversity Initiative to survey underrepresented minority (URM) graduate students

Princeton University is currently at a crucial juncture with respect to the way we respond to calls to improve the racial climate on campus. Actions undertaken last semester by student activists under the leadership of the Black Justice League have served to bring to light injustices endured by undergraduate students on campus. The Princeton Diversity Initiative now seeks to add to the conversation additional voices that until now have been missing — those of underrepresented minority graduate students.

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Through conversations on campus following the protests, it has come to light that URM, especially black students, are searching for ways to be able to have their voices represented to the University’s administration. Graduate students in particular tend to be less connected to the campus community, and URM graduate students share their own set of experiences when moving through a space like Princeton University that can be hostile to their identities.

Following last semester’s student protests, some initiative has been undertaken by the university administration to create an inclusive atmosphere on campus. While URM students are generally supportive of that goal, PDI feels that graduate students have not been actively included in the administration’s considerations of the URM student experience, and the unique challenges that URM graduate students face are not heard enough by the administration or the faculty and staff of some academic departments. Through conversations among PDI’s members and through the information that we have gathered through surveys and focus groups thus far, it has become clear that diversity and inclusion vary greatly from department to department and that information about these differences is not well communicated between departments or to the university and graduate school administration.

Additionally, URM students commonly feel that the onus is placed on them to “prove” to the administration that they suffer injustices on campus so that the administration may then take action. To address both the need of students to be heard and the desire of the administration to receive concrete examples of hostilities against URM students on campus, PDI is now conducting focus groups on campus in order to undertake a qualitative analysis of the climate in the graduate school at Princeton. Women in STEM fields have experienced great success in using this model of data collection in order to represent the concerns of their constituents to administration, and PDI is now building from this model.

We ask that all URM graduate students consider participating in the focus groups, in order to share their own personal experiences. Allies of URM groups are also welcome to reach out to PDI for opportunities to share their own experiences regarding interactions that they have witnessed on campus. The results of all of PDI’s surveys and focus groups will be completely confidential, and only five graduate students (the students of PDI) will have access to survey responses.

While we know that students have interest in knowing what the outcome of the project will be, PDI must be honest and transparent in communicating that actions taken following data collection will depend on the feedback that we receive from students. PDI will review survey and focus group results and subsequently form a plan of action based on trends observed in the experiences reported. We will present findings to university administration as well as make recommendations that follow from our findings. From preliminary results, PDI is considering recommending specific models of diversity training for faculty and staff, recommending measures of diversity that the university should be collecting and publicizing, and/or making a mental health professional available to diversity groups on campus in order to create a space in which URM experiences may be constructively shared on a regular basis.

PDI would like to especially thank the various diversity organizations that have supported this initiative and would like thank the greater student body for their support of various forms of activism on campus. Together we can help create a more inclusive campus for all students at Princeton University.

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If there are any questions, please feel free to send a message to princetondiversityinitiative@gmail.com. Thanks for your support,

The Princeton Diversity Initiative

Chaya Crowder, Politics

Aja Kennedy, Wilson School

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