Trinity College will make six new diversity hires each year, implement mandatory ‘unconscious bias,' 'microaggression’ training
Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut promised to hire six new “special opportunity hires” each year for the next three years.
The school also announced other initiatives in its plan to combat "systemic racism."
Trinity College announced that it will hire six new “special opportunity hires” each year for the next three years, in an effort to increase staff diversity.
On November 2, Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney penned a letter to the community, providing an update on the school’s actions to “address systemic racism.”
First, Trinity created a Campus Climate Task Force “to assess our problems and to create a structure to address them.” Though nearly 300 individuals applied to work on the task force, only 28 were chosen.
The school also committed to “guidelines for Special Opportunity Hires,” which would commit the college to “creating six such hires each year for the next three years to increase faculty diversity” as part of the “normal allotment of faculty hires at Trinity.”
“Ideally, all of our faculty hiring and retention processes will support the college’s commitment to attracting and supporting a faculty that represents a broad spectrum of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and life experiences,” explained Berger-Sweeney. “The SOH initiative recognizes the need to accelerate these efforts. Our commitment to hire a more diverse faculty is universal, and we will hold ourselves accountable for doing so.”
The college also bolstered its “anti-racist education and programming.”
Its diversity office will provide a course about unconscious bias, microaggressions, and similar topics, which will be “required for all students, faculty, and staff.”
Additionally, the school implemented required sexual harassment prevention and education training for all freshmen and sophomores, as well as “required DEI orientation for first-years” and “social justice mediation training for students.”
Trinity also recently launched the Primus Project, which will seek to “better understand the college’s past and forge a more just and inclusive present.”
The initiative will seek to consider campus building name changes.
Campus Reform contacted Trinity College for comment and will update this article accordingly.
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