Question

"Imagine that you are the director of student affairs at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. During a staff meeting, the president of the college shares a number of complaints. The complaints allege that many LGBT students encounter prejudice and discrimination both on campus and among townspeople. The students feel that these problems are college-wide and need to be addressed by the president and her staff as well as by community leaders.

The president asks you to create an action plan. She feels that the college needs to open the lines of communication and encourage inclusive, honest dialogue on this issue.

Develop a summary of what you propose. Include the rationale behind your action plan."

Answer 1

Rationale

The rationale behind this action plan is to open the lines of communication between townspeople, college administration, community leaders, and college students to honestly and openly address the topic of prejudice and discrimination, throughout the town and on campus. Many students have expressed their feelings of being victims of being discriminated against. This action plan will allow all current and new students to feel welcome and comfortable within the campus and town. This plan will provide an environment that is free from discrimination or victimization of any kind and promotes equality, diversity and good relations between students and people of different groups.

Campus Principles

The campus principles are regardless of a person’s age, race, religion, gender, ability, sexual orientation or socio-economic status: (a) inherent right for respect of their human worth and dignity (b) have the same fundamental human right and responsibilities as in another person in the town. (c) have the rights to choose their lifestyle and have control over their own lives.

Objective

The objective of this action plan is to create active efforts by college administrations, community leaders and students to identify and eliminate discriminator or prejudice behavior within the townspeople and college campus. This can be done by promoting open lines of communication and encourage inclusive dialogue through events and programs that reflect the community and college campus as a safe and welcoming environment for all groups regardless of age, race, religion, gender, ability, sexual orientation or socio-economic status.

Goal

The goal for this action plan is to create a welcoming and safe college campus and community that have an open line of communication to address the economic, cultural and social needs of town people and students despite their sexual orientation or race. Besides, to continue to maintain scrupulous standards of integrity, equality, and fairness by taking responsibility for their actions and avoiding conflict of interest and treat each other as well as townspeople and colleagues equally. The townspeople, employees and campus students will have access to information about diversity, equality, discrimination, and prejudice, which will provide them with the needed knowledge and understanding of these terms.

Reporting

Any persons that may hear witness or experience any form of discrimination; that includes any townsperson, colleagues or student are encouraged to report the incident immediately and its occurrence place. Also, the report should be detail oriented; including witnesses involved and the location of occurrence, and reported to or a representative of the student union, , work environment student services, the equal rights coordinator at the unit for staff and organizational department, the designated officials at the Students Centre, and , the university lawyers.

Moves of action

Several action movements will be looked at. The first move of action is for students to participate with community leaders, campus administrators, and townspeople in events and programs that discuss discrimination and the importance of diversity and equality in a setting.

Another move of action is to establish and implement a review team that will check all internal and external documents before going out to students to ensure that the language, format, and images do not exhibit anything in prejudice or discriminatory way.

Third, a personal code of Conduct will be developed and implemented for campus students as well as anyone else that enters campus. Anyone that enters the campus will have to follow and uphold these guidelines. All guidelines will be posted through the campus so that everyone will be reminded and familiar of the campus expectation.

The fourth movement of action will be the development and implementation that the social marketing team will design that will share stories of campus students diverse background, their experience of discrimination, as well as strategies that will address racism, discrimination, and prejudice.

The fifth move of action will be establishing a resource room or center that will include resources of best practices related to diversity, diversity management and establish a networking campus page for communication on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They will all relate students to issues and solutions on discrimination and prejudice throughout the town and campus.