The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) competency area includes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to create learning environments that are enriched with diverse views and people. It is also designed to create an institutional ethos that accepts and celebrates differences among people, helping to free them of any misconceptions and prejudices.
Reflection:
Throughout my fellowship experience, my main experience with this competency came from having student conduct meetings with international students. Even though I am a firm believer in equity, diversity, and inclusion I had little exposure to this competency. Throughout the semester I have had students in my office from countries such as Spain, Brazil, Russia, and even some parts in Asia. However, even though these students were from all over the world they all had one thing in common, the culture shock.
The main incidents that I had to handle with international students had to do with alcohol consumption. As most people know the legal drinking age in the United States is 21. However, in most other countries around the world the legal drinking age is 18. This is a drastic change for international students who are looking to attend school in the US. I would say 90% of the international students who came in to meet with me did not understand what policy they had violated. It was my job to educate them on the drinking policies of the college and the US in order to best serve them and Merrimack. Often times, I would highlight Merrimack’s student handbook and explain what the policies mean and why they are in place. All of the conversations went extremely well and most of the students and even though I explained to them that college is a learning experience, all of them were extremely apologetic. In order to help these students grow and learn from their experience, I would utilize my creative sanction abilities in order to think of outside the box sanctions for them.
My most successful sanction that I assigned to a couple of the students was to have them right a two to three page reflection paper on what role alcohol plays in their life. As I was reading through their responses, it became clear to me why most of the students were drinking and that it had to do with cultural values and traditions. This was a great learning experience for me in the way that it gave me more things to consider when speaking with students about alcohol consumption, especially international students.
Artifact:
http://www.merrimack.edu/live/files/45-student-handbook
The artifact that I chose for this competency was the Merrimack College Student Handbook. This is the handbook that I used to highlight the certain policies that were violated by all the students across the campus. The outline of the handbook not only explains the policy violations but also the student conduct process as a whole.
Benjamin Woupio 