Plans are currently underway to develop diversity-training workshops for Brandeis public safety officers. The idea was first conceived four years ago through discussions between Assistant Dean of Student Life for Diversity Affairs the Rev. Nathaniel Mays, the Protestant Chaplain and Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan. More recently, increased attention to diversity, both on campus and nationwide, prompted a renewed focus on the project.Diversity training is "helping people to learn how to build healthy relationships with other people who might be different," Mays said. This includes not only those who are racially diverse, but as Callahan said, "members of any type of constituency that would come to Brandeis."
On Oct. 7, senior administrators partook in a day of such training. Mays is now examining various off-campus contacts to coordinate workshops for public safety officers. The starting date is still uncertain, as it depends on an available budget and the schedules of police officers and the would-be instructors, according to Mays. "Some sort of training will happen before the school year is over," he said. "That's a fact."

The Student Union government, spurred by a cited sense of unease among students regarding interactions with police, has also begun to investigate diversity education.

Lauree Hayden '03, Union special projects coordinator, said, "The Student Union is in the stage of first, asking the community what is already happening, and second, finding out what the community wants. If we find that the current level of training isn't adequate, we certainly hope to play a role."

"In the past couple of years, we've been hearing random students discuss how they've been treated by the police, especially black, Hispanic and GLBT students," said Union Community Integration Coordinator Peggy M. Eyssallenne '04. She mentioned a specific incident last year, when the campus police broke up a gathering of black students in a Grad apartment. "The police were being really rude and yelling at kids," she said. "It's in their tone, in the way they address students sometimes."

"Students shouldn't feel uncomfortable about approaching the police," Eyssallenne said. "As members of Student Union, we feel it's our duty to bring this matter up."

Eyssallenne remarked that these incidents "don't get brought up into mainstream Brandeis because they're so isolated."

Mays said he did not know of any recent incidents of police insensitivity towards minority students. He did express, though, that the concept of diversity training was initially conceived in response to complaints about police behavior about five or six years ago. Some black students reported that Public Safety officers had questioned them about the legitimacy of their presence on campus. "These officers are not a part of the staff any longer," Mays said.

"At around the same time, there were incidents with Waltham police treating students in the same way," Mays said. "We held meetings on campus with Brandeis police, the Waltham police chief and some officers, as well as students. We haven't had any of these problems since."

Mays said diversity is more pertinentnow than ever. He referenced an article titled "Planning for the Unusual Class of 2008," written by Robin Zuniga and Cherly Blanco in the Spring 1999 College Board Review. This article predicted that the high school graduating class of 2008 would be both the largest and the most racially and ethnically diverse in U.S. history. These same students will then be entering colleges and universities, resulting in calls for "creative ways of addressing diverse students on our campus."

According to Mays, this approach requires continuous reexamination and restructuring, hence the impetus for diversity training workshops. "The things we've done in the past were excellent for the past," Mays said. To stay the same, he said, would be comparable to the biblical adage of "carrying new wine in old wine skins."

"It's an area that needs constant updating," Callahan said, echoing Mays. "It's like anything else in life, you have to look inward and see if there are areas that we can improve upon and communicate more effectively and interact more effectively."

Mays said a diversity-training workshop might take several forms, depending on the context and who is leading the particular workshop. Participants would first consider how they see themselves in particular environments, paying attention to their backgrounds, biases and "high points that (they think) transcend bias." The second phase would examine "understanding of the other," namely, "how you think they see you."

Mays referred to the expression "double consciousness," coined by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), and described it by saying, "you see yourself and you see how you think others see you."

"We want to look at how we can marry those two entities for a healthy relationship," Mays added.

According to Callahan, the training would teach "how to communicate, interact and address sensitive concerns or issues."

This is of particular significance to police officers, Callahan said, since "most of the time, the officers are kind of front-line people, and they interact with students who have a diverse factor of concerns that goes with daily life and a university setting."

Mays also addressed the particular role of police. "Because many people are intimidated by the symbolism of the police uniform, the police need to be taught how to communicate with all members of our community in such a way as to emotionally disarm those people who might be uncomfortable interacting with them," he said. "None of us come to Brandeis knowing everything we need to know. Just as we want our students to learn and develop, the rest of us have the responsibility to improve our ability to be more effective in our jobs."

"I don't know if I would single out the police any more than anyone else on campus," said Noah Browne '03, co-coordinator of the Brandeis division of Society Organized Against Racism (SOAR).

"Considering the current circumstances and heightened security, the ante is up in terms of protecting students," he said.

Ideally, Browne said, "Students in general could benefit from well-done, thorough, intense diversity training." However, he said he believed this would be difficult. "It would be great and wonderful, but it's never going to happen ... It's hard to do with people who don't come to it with an open mind," he said.

"It's OK to focus on the police and administration for now and have voluntary training for students," Browne said.

Browne said he is concerned that diversity training has the potential to be superficial. "A two hour workshop in the afternoon -- to me, that's not training, that's like a meeting. If you really want to get people to learn in a diverse community, it takes time," he said. "You need to get people to realize what innate prejudices they carry with them. We all have prejudices and it takes time for people to break through and realize them. Before we do that, we're just scratching the surface."

Speaking to this point, Mays said, "My hope and goal is that it won't just be a one-time thing ... A program or an event isn't enough." One possible option is to incorporate diversity training into annual police training and training for new recruits, he said.

Mays also said he envisions a team of "ambassadors for diversity on campus," comprised of students, staff and faculty who would attend outside conferences and be alert for speakers and workshop leaders to bring to Brandeis.

Mays, Callahan and Browne all emphasized the large scope of diversity, mentioning race, but also sexual orientation, nationality, religion, class and political ideology. "Most people, when they think of diversity, they think of race," Mays said. "I'm concerned about all forms of diversity."

"Some kinds of diversity you can see on the surface -- race, gender, sexual orientation. Class is harder to see, but not that hard. Ideology and political disposition are impossible to see on the surface," Browne said. "Too often we get stuck on race."

"My goal is that (diversity) will be so positive and so much a part of our campus community that it becomes a part of our culture here, that we don't have to have specific designations, that when people come to Brandeis, they'll expect that it's a part of our nature," Mays said.