Penn State program focuses on inclusive language

While tensions between minority students and their colleges made headlines this fall, a campaign was underway in Penn State’s dorms to make students aware of words, such as derogatory homosexual terms or racial slurs, that can make their peers feel unwelcome.

Second-year resident assistant Jael Charles, 21, said she’s noticed in her four years that this kind of offensive language has become so prevalent in conversations on campus that people may not even be mindful of it anymore.

“I know University Park is a big campus, and I’ve been in instances where I’ve been walking past and someone has said something that made me feel uncomfortable,” said Charles, one of 1,873 black students who accounted for 4 percent of the 46,848 University Park students in the fall semester.

“You want to make sure you’re creating an environment that makes people comfortable,” said Charles, who works in East Halls. “That’s especially important because this is a shared environment.”

The Residence Life program was timely, coming amid heightened racial tension on college campuses, most notably at the University of Missouri, where administration inaction in response to racial incidents on campus led to protests and the resignation of the university’s president and chancellor in November.

Penn State was one of several universities that saw peaceful protests in solidarity with Missouri minority students. However, most recently, a Penn State student was charged with felony ethnic intimidation and terroristic threats, among other charges, after an alleged racially motivated attack on Dec. 5.

Residence Life senior assistant director Kelly Griffith and assistant director Nick Pazdziorko began the campaign after their supervisor challenged them to develop a new diversity and inclusion effort.

Griffith said its purposes are to “draw attention to the student-identified words and phrases” and “provide strategies for conversations with peers using these words or phrases.”

The University of Michigan and the University of Maryland had previously launched similar campaigns. Griffith contacted both.

“One of the biggest takeaways was to really involve students in the development phrase,” Griffith said.

Last spring, Residence Life staff placed blank survey cards in dormitory common areas, asking students to identify offensive phrases they hear, then cite how they interpret them. More than 300 cards were collected.

The results were sorted into seven themes: gender, body size, mental health, race, culture, sexual orientation and sexual violence. Each is featured on posters in common areas and rotated monthly, viewed by the approximately 13,700 students living on campus.

After the surveys were collected, a display outside the Residence Life office showcased 81 surveys that contained the message, “Would you say that if you knew,” followed by handwritten, personal stories from students about a term or phrase that led to discomfort and why they felt that way.

Residence Life staff also placed signs on every dorm floor urging residents to be mindful of their words. Griffith hopes students will use social media, such as Twitter with the hashtag #ILCmystory, to share and view personal stories.

This has not caught on to date, but one post read: “ ‘Crazy. Insane. Mental.’ Would you say that if you knew I struggle with psychological issues? Your words matter.”

A workshop on issues around campus and the need for the campaign is planned for the spring semester.

Meanwhile, Charles urged her fellow students to take responsibility for spreading the message of maintaining an inclusive living and learning environment.

“Just being cognizant of what you say and how you react to people can really make a difference,” she said.

This story was originally published January 7, 2016 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Penn State program focuses on inclusive language."