Hi all! It has been busy in the office preparing for this year's Diversity Monologue contest so apologizes for the lack of posts. Just wanted to let you know about an amazing opportunity this coming weekend here on campus. The 5th Annual GSA Leadership Summit will occur this Saturday from 10am-5pm. Robyn Ochs, an award winning activist and the editor of the 42 country anthology, "Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World", will be this year's keynote speaker. 
Tomorrow night, open to all, is a "Drive-In" Workshop Series with Robyn Ochs. She will be holding a Challenging Heterosexism workshop in Adams Basement from 3pm-430pm. Later that evening she will be holding a Beyond Binaries: Identity and Sexuality workshop, exploring the landscape of sexual orientation. This event will be in the Social Hall from 6pm-7:45pm. 
Try to stop by one or more of these events as Robyn Ochs is someone you surely do not want to miss! Hope you all have a wonderful weekend

Everyone should check out or try to make it to one of the events during the MLK Institute happening this weekend at Dickinson, sponsored by our office (ODI!!). This year's theme is "MLK and The Millennial Generation." 
The weekend will start off with a panel discussion on Friday, Feb. 10, moderated by the one and only Joyce Bylander at 12:30 in Stern Great Room. Panelist include: Dr. Vernan Carraway, MLK Scholar and Re-enactor, Dr. Mara Donaldson, Prof. of Religion, Brenda Bretz, Associate Provost for Curriculum, and Lenoard Brown, Dean of Students and Associate VP for Student Development.  
At 4:30 the Speech Contest will take place in Weis 235 where you can come out and listen to Christina Mullen among other great students!
At 7:00 an "Evening with King" or, more specifically Dr Vernan Carraway will perform specific vignettes of King's speeches and essays, followed with a personal commentary on their relevance in our contemporary society. Rumor has it, Dr. Carraway is quite an individual, both in his impressive impersonations, and his own personal story. Taken from Dickinson's latest issue of "Extra Features," a piece promoting the MLK Institute explains Dr. Carraway's interesting past: "Vernon Carraway was a gifted athlete, sailing on the coattails of an athletics scholarship at Slippery Rock University. He also was functionally illiterate, having reserved the sum of his passion and energy for the game. Then his psychology professor offered a challenge—to learn to read by studying the works of Martin Luther King Jr.

It was 1969, a year after King’s assassination, and it would take several years of daily tutoring for Carraway to reach his goal. But as he pored over King’s texts, the words rang as electric and true to Carraway as they had when he’d first heard King deliver them, six years before.

Today, Carraway is a noted King scholar and interpreter with a Ph.D. in workforce education & development from Pennsylvania State University, where he works as a counselor. On Feb. 10, he will visit Dickinson to take part in a daylong program, MLK and the Millennial Generation."We are lucky to have participate in this annual event. Paula and Norm Jones should also be commemorated for their instrumental roles in founding and planning the program. Hope to see everyone on Friday!!Enjoy the snow

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood." Audre Lorde


Some more Audre Lorde :)
"It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences."

We had a great discussion during our staff meeting today about the notion of making diversity "tangible". We often struggle with this idea when it comes to designing and executing effective diversity programming for the Dickinson campus. As a innovative team of Diversity Assistants (DA's) we are always careful that we are not putting on the same old boring diversity programming that can sometimes taint our work/mission to the appear trite. We are aware that in a time when we all have our icalendars chock-full of appointments, activities, and adventures, we have to be innovative to capture the attention of our fellow Dickinsonians. We must therefore strive to make our diversity work, tangible, or accessible and interesting. The aspiring teacher in me believes that we must make our work therefore privy to the five sense. While such a notion can primarily sound as trite and boring as the exact type of "traditional" programming we here at the ODI try to design beyond, I propose that it is exactly what a campus of college students needs to wake up and realize that we live in a society where issues of diversity are increasingly important as we, as a campus, and as a society become less and less homogenous. 

So, to take a stab at such "tangible" diversity work, the Voices of the People Initiative will hold the ODI's TENTH annual Diversity Monologue Contest sometime this semester (looks like it will be in late Spring as of now!) The annual event is always well-attended, and is a testament to the strength of the Dickinson Community, a community that WANTS to hear each other's stories, about what makes each individual unique, and exceptional, and dun dun dun "diverse". The DMC is in its nature therefore, "tangible". The event allows for the Dickinson Community to have a better understanding of what the current issues we, as students, face today are, in regards to our community, our society, and our experience as dynamic individuals growing up in a tumultuous and ever-changing world. But, here is the catch (the part when I ask of you for your ideas), how can we make the DMC even more "tangible"? How can we as an office, make people able to understand, feel, see, hear, what diversity we have on this college campus in new, sense inspiring ways? 

Looking forward to hear some ideas and stay tuned for more information about the DMC 2012!!

We here at the ODI are back from our winter hiatus. We are so excited about this upcoming semester, as we have great programs on the horizon. We are in the beginning stages of planning ODI's 10th Annual Diversity Monologue Contest! Audition information will be coming soon and the event itself will be during the last week of March. We are also going to help promote a Dickinson student's photography project with a latino community center in central PA. It will be a busy semester, and we hope you are as excited as we are. 

For the meantime, please check out Staceyann Chin. Her name has been buzzing around our office and we are in love with her poetry content (illuminating untold histories!) and her incredible voice and style. Below you will find a reading of Bartolomé de Las Casas, a portion from Zinn's A People's History of the United States. She was actually introduced by Zinn himself at this reading. Enjoy and stay tuned for these upcoming exciting events from VOTP. 

Did any of you know that the day after Thanksgiving has been dubbed the "National Day of Listening?" Well neither did we! Started in 2008 by StoryCorps, the day asks us to forget about Black Friday and leftovers, and record an interview with a loved one. We love StoryCorps' mission: "Our mission is provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives." Each year StoryCorps picks a theme and this year it was "Thank  a Teacher." We love this theme, as we here at the ODI recognize the role that educators play in presenting our past history as part of our present. Teachers across the country have adopted Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States curriculum, and supplemented their textbooks with material from his book. Teachers have the power to be "truth tellers" and we want you to join us in this effort to celebrate their work. By taking a few minutes to interview a favorite teacher, or one with an important story to tell, here is your opportunity to support us in our mission: giving voice to the silenced. 

National Day of Listening was covered by NPR. 

Last week's New Yorker Thanksgiving Cover certainly stirred up some conversation about the very loaded national immigration debate. The Huffington Post article about the cover is a great starting point for conversation about the cover. We here at the ODI are fans of the cover. Through its ironic portrayal of pilgrims desperately crossing the border, it calls into question how we treat immigrants coming into this country today. America has always been a "land of opportunities" and we often take that for granted. So in the spirit of memories of our full bellies from last week's feast, take some time to think about who this cover is giving a voice to. Which story is it telling or trying to tell? And how does this cover and its connotations connect to your life? Happy (belated) Thanksgiving from all of us at ODI. 


Huffington Post Article

We want to thank everyone who came out to the VOTP's first event VINCENT WHO? Curtis Chin wowed the crowd and stimulated a lively conversation about his experience creating the documentary and the Asian American community nationally and activism on college campuses. We were very lucky to have him come to campus as look forward to following his work as he continues his activism for the Asian Pacific Americans for Progress (APAforprogress.org) organization, the Democratic political party, and more. The Office of Diversity Initiatives now owns a copy of the documentary. Please feel free to check it out of our library in Landis House. 

Welcome to the Voices of The People blog.  This blog will highlight upcoming VOTP events happening at Dickinson College and will be an interactive space to discuss issues pertaining to VOTP's mission. 

For Vincent Chin, a bachelor party to celebrate his upcoming wedding turned into an ugly confrontation in a Detroit bar, and later into a fatal beating outside of a fast food restaurant.  This 1982 murder ignited a people and awakened an Asian-American civil rights movement.

On Wednesday November 16 at 7 P.M. in the Stern Great Room there will be a viewing of the film Vincent Who?, which documents this powerful story.  This 40 minute documentary will be followed by a discussion with the film's producer, Curtis Chin.  In addition to our program this event is also sponsored by Dickinson's Asian American Alliance.  Our community is being presented with an opportunity discover a deeply important story and the legacy that it leaves behind.

We encourage you to attend.  View the Vincent Who? trailer here