“Living the Vision” became the theme of fall 2016, with everyone in the community challenging themselves to make Trinity the place we wish it to be. Next, Phase II, in spring 2016, featured the implementation of many of the ideas. At November 2015’s TrinColl2Action, more than 200 people gathered on a Saturday to learn about the recommendations of the five working groups and to vote on those ideas on the spot by using their cell phones. The Campaign’s first phase involved assembling five student working groups to identify specific means of improving campus climate. Our student-centered Campaign for Community, introduced in April 2015, examines and addresses diversity and inclusion, as well as many other major issues facing any college, including academic environment, social environment, and community involvement. While truly regretful, this incident reminded us that we must be ever vigilant in all that we do inclusive - in every way, shape, and form - is at the heart of what we aspire to be at Trinity College. We quickly realized that we had failed to be inclusive by thinking of all holidays on that date that might prevent anyone interested from attending. In an ironic mea culpa, the event was scheduled for the same date as Rosh Hashanah, a Jewish High Holiday. All three offered inspiring insight on institutional responses to student activism. The end result, it was hoped, was that the participants returned to their campuses with a set of concrete strategies to transform moments of crisis into opportunities to accomplish much-needed change.įeatured speakers included Shaun Harper, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education Carol Geary Schneider, Ph.D., president emerita of the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and Ajay Nair, Ph.D., senior vice president and dean of campus life at Emory University.
The conference aimed to give these college leaders a chance to meet one another and to network, to collect information, and to reflect. We purposefully kept the number of attendees small to help foster substantive, meaningful discussions. This gathering of nearly 40 college presidents and administrators from 18 selective liberal arts colleges engaged in an examination of the leadership role that presidents play in relationship to the questions posed by our students. That is why Trinity, in collaboration with the Consortium on High Achievement and Success (CHAS), played host to “Setting the Tone: Student Activism, Community, and Presidential Leadership” in October 2016. Student protests here and throughout the country have brought into focus pressing issues that have been brewing for some time. We at Trinity College are living many of the same experiences that affect others who are not members of our community. As a college president, I see how our campus is a microcosm of our society at large. Our nation’s recent climate - with the tumultuous presidential election, instances of racial discrimination and profiling, and situations involving the intolerance of individual differences - has given everyone pause about the state of the world we live in today.