What are your plans for Pride Month? How was Black History Month? Is National Hispanic-Latino Heritage Month in your fall content calendar?
These are the wrong questions.
In March, a brave marketer asked me how she should respond to an executive who asked her to spend a majority of her time researching “diversity days” and ensuring social media content was created to recognize them.
I quickly responded, “How are you serving historically marginalized populations on your campus? When you post about Jewish holidays, are you also ensuring exams aren’t scheduled on them? Do Black students see themselves reflected in your faculty and curriculum? Do your policies favor families formed through heterosexual relationships? Have you built your curriculum and facilities around White, often male, norms?”
If you’re not addressing those things, the programming and communication you’re creating for heritage months or cultural celebrations is performative. When you effectively serve all people, recognizing them on a particular day or month of the year will become less of a focus.
The people we celebrate with the cultural calendar are your audience, and you must get to know them.
13 million people in the U.S. identify as LGBTQ, including 9.5% of youth ages 13–17. 1.4 million adults and 150,000 kids ages 13–17 identify as trans. They need to be seen, heard, served, and respected all twelve months of the year, not just in June.
40% of the U.S. population is non-White—that increases to 49% for Gen Z, which is 25% Hispanic, 14% Black, and 5% Asian. They need to be represented, understood, invested in, and respected beyond their designated month.
The student who pursues higher education in 2030 won’t have a lot in common with the student who stepped onto campus in 2000, which is when I entered college. The typical student most institutions were built to serve (recent high school graduates from a middle to upper-middle class family) are declining in numbers, but that “demographic cliff” should scare you less if you’re prepared to serve the students who reflect our country’s younger demographics. They’re more likely to be female, less likely to be white, and more likely to fit the profile of a “non-traditional” student—over the age of 24, working full-time, possessing some credit but no degree, and/or a parent. These students have been underserved for decades, yet the health and longevity of many institutions will now depend on their ability to attract and retain them.
Serve them first, then celebrate them. If not, they’ll see right through your performative inclusivity. To serve well, use listening as a proactive, ongoing strategy to deepen your understanding of your community (resource).
Liz Gross
CEO + Founder of Campus Sonar
Listen to the Conditional
Unconditional.
This word has come into my life in numerous ways lately I wasn’t expecting. The first time, it was from Jeffrey Marsh on an Instagram post. Jeffrey is a non-binary writer and social media personality (among many other credentials), and in this post, they were challenging the concept of unconditional love.
The second time, it was from my yoga teacher, and again she was challenging the concept of unconditional. Unconditional love, boundaries, relationships, expectations.
So why challenge the good-intentioned concept of unconditional? Because conditions are necessary. We, as humans, need conditions to feel safe, supported, and successful. So the idea of sweepingly removing the necessity of those conditions suddenly seems less good-intentioned.
I’ve been returning to students’ struggles that have shown up repeatedly throughout the pandemic and new rounds of racial and social injustices we’ve seen over the last couple of years. Emotional stress. Racism. Bigotry. Financial stress. Housing insecurity. Illness. Food insecurity. Technology gaps. Family insecurity. Burnout. Loneliness. There are, unfortunately, more than ever.
We explored in one of our STREAM reports the factors specifically related to the pandemic that were within and outside of a campus’s control. There are things you can impact, like tuition and finances, classes, technology, and accessibility. And there are things with many factors outside your control, like the pandemic, mental health struggles, and life changes or hardships.
But I find myself wondering…how often do we create student experiences unconditionally? With the best of intentions, but without proper examination and consideration of the conditional needs of specific individuals or groups of individuals?
Just one example of this is the way the forced online learning of the pandemic benefited students with specific accessibility needs, shining a spotlight on how many of those students’ needs aren’t being met physically in the classroom or on campus grounds.
As many campuses get into deep planning mode over the summer, are you going back to what your students have told you their conditions are so you can move forward trying to meet them? By now, we all need to realize there is no “going back to normal.” That idea of normal has been shattered by what we’ve been through. But through those shattered remains, we have an opportunity to build something new.
The successful campuses will be the ones who take the time to do this hard work. The ones who have leaders who aren’t afraid to push boundaries and find the spaces to innovate, and build teams who are willing and enabled to do the work. The ones who are listening to make changes.
Bri Krantz
Marketing Director
Smart Planning with STREAM
After decision day and commencements, the end of May can bring a much-needed pause (and hopefully some well-deserved PTO) for many of us in the higher ed industry. There’s an opportunity to exhale and take stock of another year, recruitment season, and then switch gears to one of my favorite things—planning.
Whether you love it or hate it, reflection and planning are essential in keeping our goals top of mind. What worked? Have our plans changed? Where are students and faculty struggling? These are excellent places to delve deeper; into how your campus has changed, where you are now, and where you want to be.
Self-awareness is like having SMART goals that effectively contextualize your desired state and allow you to prioritize future efforts to get you there. Planning magic. No matter what your yearly institutional, departmental, or personal reflection looks like, STREAM is here to supercharge your efforts with community support and research spanning campus benchmarks, recruitment and yield insights, alumni voices, and special topical deep-dives (like our newly released Name, Image, Likeness report). Every aspect of STREAM, from webinars with industry experts and blogs to infographics, is designed to help you take action towards meeting your goals.
We’ve got you covered with freshly launched individual and team memberships if you're new to STREAM. Have questions or experiences to share? I’d love to connect with you to learn more and introduce you to STREAM for your best year yet!
Another aspect of serving your students is by creating accessible and inclusive content. In Episode 9 of Social Strategy Fundamentals our guest experts discuss approaching accessibility as a mindset rather than a checklist and thinking of it as a way to strengthen and make connections with your students.
Guest moderator Alexa Heinrich and guest experts Theresa Mabe and Nick DeNardis share excellent tips and advice on how they approach accessibility on their teams and in their daily work.
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