Short OS on Diversity with university students

[Esther .]

Hi there:

Well I promised to report on this exercise for you.

First the background:

The client was the student government of a university graduate level theatre
program. It is a small student community of about 120. They have a student
run extra-curricular theatre program that puts on a different production each
week.

Three weeks ago, there was a production where a couple of white female
students played black rappers doing a parody of Othello. A student of color
got up and walked out in anger and then posted to the student list serve a
his feelings of being angry and disturbed that there had been such a
portrayal of negative racial stereotypes.

This brought a flurry of reactions from "you're too sensitive" to "no one
meant to hurt you" to "this isn't just a black thing" to much broader issues
like "what is the role of the artist if it isn't to provoke and challenge our
thinking as well as entertain?" as well as "how do we balance the need for
free speech with the responsibility as a decent human being to be sensitive
to others' sensitivities and pain?".

The brand-newly elected heads of the student government decided to announce a
town hall meeting of students only to discuss this. They decided this with
courage and compassion. But then panicked because they were afraid that
people would get more hurt or that the meeting would be ineffective or get
off track or whatever else could go wrong.

They then spoke to the Deputy Dean who advised them to speak to the O.D.
specialist who specializes in diversity issues within the university and she
advised them to get a facilitator. She suggested one person but he wasn't
available and so the Deputy Dean called me.

Now that was Friday. So I had the weekend of phone calls to prepare the
students and discuss possible methodologies but right from the beginning I
thought that OST would be perfect for this as it put the power of speech in
the hands (or mouths) of the students.

I met yesterday afternoon to discuss this and I was so impressed with these
people - they are, of course, bright but they were articulate and passionate
and committed to making this work as well.

We did an abbreviated open space from 7 pm to 10 pm and right from the start
it went very well. People got engaged and self-organized. There were 45
students who showed up to work on it. I had tried to prepare the students to
not see it as a failure if only 15 showed up but even they were impressed
with the numbers as there were rehearsals going on in two or three different
places which absorbed a number of the students. Some had meetings from 6-8
and came at 8. Some had meetings to go to that started at 9 etc. But at the
end at 10 pm, we still had 25 students.

The proceedings will be written up and so I wait to see that document but it
went very well and many students at the final go-around, said that they were
relieved and pleased and the student government wants to hold 5 of these a
year (they'd never held one before) and the chair has asked me how easy it
would be to learn how to run open space himself. That's very exciting.

So there is my report.

Esther




Esther Ewing
The Change Alliance - Assisting Individuals and Organizations to Build
Capability
<A HREF="www.ChangeAlliance.com">www.ChangeAlliance.com</A>
330 East 38th St, Suite 53K
New York, NY 10016-9804
212-661-6024

Authorized Distributor, Panoramic Feedback
<A HREF="www.PanoramicFeedback.com">www.panoramicfeedback.com</A>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20030210/e6020f12/attachment-0016.htm>