Student Leaders Recruit Colleagues to Sign Diversity Pledge
| Three students simultaneously crouched over a vinyl banner signing their names with Sharpie markers: a Black female, an Asian female and a white male.
Alice Gardner, a student in the College of Public Health, signs the banner on Wednesday, Oct. 21.
It was a moment encapsulating the pledge on the banner itself, a resolve to create a community in which “each person’s unique voice is heard and can contribute to the overall student experiences so that the life of our student body remains vibrant and continues to flourish.”
The Oct. 21 signing event was third in a week during which all UAMS students were invited to take the pledge in a drive initiated by the Associated Student Government (ASG) and supported by the UAMS Division for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and UAMS Campus Life and Student Support Services.
“This summer, ASG recognized we weren’t doing enough to address apparent inequalities, so we got together and asked our members what we could do to show support for underrepresented minorities in our community,” said Allison Schneider, a fourth-year medical student and ASG president.
The first step in an ongoing outreach and engagement plan was to invite all students to take the pledge at Bruce Fountain throughout the week of Oct. 19. Signers were treated to a free lunch and a tee shirt with a word cloud on the back.
“We asked all our students to provide one or two words about what diversity means to them, and that’s what’s on the back of our shirt.”
Brian Gittens, Ed.D., vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion, signs his name to the banner.
The banner will ultimately be displayed in the student center.
“We want to do more, and we will, but we thought this was a good start,” said Schneider. “We’re a diverse population, and we need to be more open and show our support for that diversity, which represents our patients, our colleagues, our friends and our professors. We’re not doing enough and need to do more. Change is not going to come overnight, we realize that. But this is a good first step.”
While each college and the graduate school were invited to come on separate days to keep crowds small during the pandemic, no student was turned away from signing. The effort collected a few dozen signatures each day, though many students are still only attending classes remotely.
“We will get more signatures and are in the process of figuring out more things we can do to show our support,” said Schneider.
Brian Gittens, Ed.D., vice chancellor for diversity, equity and inclusion, applauded the effort.
“First and foremost we’re an academic institution, and our students are the future of health care,” he said. “So if you get them attuned to diversity, equity and inclusion issues, it bodes well for their ability to treat patients from diverse backgrounds and to have the cultural sensitivity and responsiveness necessary to help mitigate health care disparities.
UAMS Provost Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D., speaks with Associated Student Government officers. All are wearing the shirt featuring a word cloud made of student responses defining diversity.
“Oftentimes I get asked, ‘how do you know when you’ve made it when it comes to diversity?’ And I think these are the indicators right here. We have metrics and goals, but here we have a situation where we have a student-led event in which they came to us and all we did was offer our support. From that you start to get the notion that diversity, equity and inclusion is getting embedded into the culture itself in a decentralized way. And to me that means the future looks bright.”
Provost Stephanie Gardner, Pharm.D., Ed.D., also applauded the students’ determination to make a statement and organize a campus event that was cognizant of pandemic safety.
“We all want a campus where all students feel welcome, and this event symbolizes both that commitment and diversity as an institutional core value,” she said.