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November 13, 2020

"Planning without action is futile, 

action without planning is fatal."  

- Cornelius Fichtner
  • Join us at SDI's virtual panel event Landback: A Critical Conversation About Reconciliation on Monday, November 16th from 10:00-11:30am. Scroll down to see the flyer.
  • I Am U Thriving's Notable Faces photoshoot is happening on Friday, November 20th from 8:30am-1:00pm in the Union Center Ballroom.

    If you have any announcements that you would like to be included in next week's newsletter, reach out to olivia.griffin@utah.edu.  

Action Planning for Social Justice


Hi GAs & Supervisors! It's me, Olivia Griffin, SDI GA, here to share a bit on action planning for social justice.
Last week, SADC's Racial Justice & Decolonization Dialogue series ended. After many weeks of reading and engaging with articles covering topics of decolonization, racism, Whiteness, social justice, and dialoguing, it was time to put that knowledge to use. Our final meeting involved presenting a transformative action plan to the group explaining how we would work towards social justice in our own professional roles, taking into consideration the conversations that we had over the past several months.
In my own transformative action plan, I committed to sharing this knowledge with you all in our SDI GA-Supervisor weekly newsletter in order to keep this important conversation going in practical ways. I know that we, as GAs and students in the ELP program, are often reading about social justice in the classroom, but are we translating this knowledge to our assistantship work? Do we feel comfortable having these oftentimes difficult conversations with our supervisors? Do we feel supported to interrogate the work we engage in each day to make sure it is upholding the values of equity that we are committed to?
These are just a few of the questions that I asked myself throughout the course of the series as I soaked in the information and listened to my fellow colleagues discuss their own action plans. I hope that you'll make time during your next 1:1 meeting to think through some of these questions, take a look at the transformative action plan template, and reflect on how you might make a plan to promote social justice in the spaces you occupy. 
In the coming weeks, we will share resources to promote social justice in higher education in this newsletter. I hope that these will guide each one of you towards completing a transformative action plan that you can truly commit to carrying out in 2021. 

Supervisor Spotlight

Name: Emery Vigil (she/her/hers)
Hometown: West Jordan, UT
Undergraduate: Communication, University of Utah
Graduate: Educational Leadership & Policy, University of Utah
Position: Student Support Manager, TRIO Upward Bound
Hobbies: I enjoy camping, hiking collecting seashells, and cooking with my partner.
Thoughts on Action Planning: This week I was asked to reflect on action planning to promote social justice. I enjoy logistics; data collection, budgeting, regulation review, policy, and procedures. When I think about action planning, my first thought is “how can we create a plan that is going to appeal to multiple stakeholders?”. Oftentimes to move forward on our ideas we need buy-in from multiple groups. Having data that supports your idea/plan, an itemized budget, and knowledge of current policy and procedures can help strengthen any action plan. I know that for most of us, making plans right now is challenging, but this can also be an opportunity to think of new and creative ways to promote social justice education and advancement.

GA Spotlight

Name: Ben Danh (he, him, his)
Hometown: Bountiful, Utah
Undergraduate: B.S. in Sociology with Minors in Economics & Diversity, University of Utah
SA Experience: During my undergrad, I had the privilege to work with academic advising and admissions here at the University of Utah, and I spend the 2019-2020 school year as a College Access Advisor at Ben Lomond High in Ogden.
Assistantship: TRIO-Upward Bound
Hobbies: Going out to dance with my friends (pre Covid), attempting to cook, advocating for social justice, twitter, playing video games, rewatching the same 3 shows, and seasonal depression.  
Thoughts on Emotional Intelligence: Working with current high school students who may become incoming University of Utah freshman in the years to come, advocating for social justice weighs heavily on my mind considering that the majority of our students identify as people of color or are a part of marginalized groups. Considering current events with the black lives matter movement and current presidential election, we have had a cultural awakening on the severity of socioeconomic issues that we have in our nation. We must recognize that we are a system based on oppression and acknowledge that as student affairs professionals, that we are in a place of privilege and must use that privilege to aid our students. Evaluating which groups we properly support on campus and recognizing which identities we do not properly represent must be our first step to figure a plan to make sure that we are properly advocating for all of our students.  

I Am U Thriving 

I AM U THRIVING is a visual story campaign that focuses on the individuals that are a part of our One U community. The photographs will highlight and validate the experiences of our community members, particularly those of color and other marginalized populations on campus.
Our Notable Faces Initial Photo Shoot will be on November 20, 2020 8:30am-1:00pm.
Check out the website to learn more & get involved!  
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