Stand Together Group

Present: Mary M., Paul, Louise, Leah, Audren, Suzanne M., Sofia, Terrence.
Next meeting: Thursday March 7, 1:30, probably in HU 101 but a note will go
out to confirm this; the room reserved for this time turned out to be doublebooked.

1. Organizational business
We set up three subgroups: a. Staff Training, which will include Suzanne,
Paul, Louise, Mary, and Mark Levine, and will meet at a time convenient for
them before the March 7 meeting of the whole. This group will take the
larger group's suggestions and fine-tune them before taking them to Staff
Development committee. Suggestions were: We need regular time at every Staff
Development day, a boilerplate hour or two that our group is willing to plan
as we see needs arise; in fall we will ask to plan a program on our own
intolerance (Fran L.'s suggestion) by a skilled facilitator, perhaps one
suggested by EOPS. Two general questions for the subgroup's consideration:
must we always import speakers, and how to include issues of
gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender safety and respect.
b. Curriculum Development for a multicultural component to the AA degree.
Leah will convene at 1 p.m. on March 4 with Karen and whoever else joins
after an email goes out.
c. Activities. No one present could volunteer to convene this; Leah will ask
Veronica G.if she could convene a subgroup that would include Jen, Leah, and
Sofia.

Audren and Terrence will take any concerns we have to President's Council.
Cathy Scattini is planning to join us in March and beyond, and she will also
be a voice there.

Leah offered to take notes to free up others. Offer accepted.

2. Projects
Leah reported on discussions with Ana about hate crime procedures. It was
clear from the Staff Development meeting that our desire for appropriate
openness is widely shared on campus. The Security staff photographs and also
usually cleans up graffiti, which is often found after hours. After
discussion of the seeming sticking point--what would be serious enough to
give notice to the entire staff--Leah volunteered to take the recommendation
back to Ana before it goes further. At this point, we recommend that the
college make known to all employees within one day (probably via email)
incidents of hate graffiti, any hate crime, or hate-related violence/threat
of hate-related violence; we would like to know the general time, place and
characteristics of the incident. Names need not and probably should not be
used. In addition, the college should inform the staff generally what steps
have been and will be taken to respond to the incident/s.

Discussion of staff development day meeting, which was incredibly well
attended. People felt good about it. Vocal people have been specially
invited to join us. Some can only come to non-Thursday meetings so we will
publicize the subgroups to them.

Discussion of Board policies. The Admin Cabinet is moving quickly on an
accreditation challenge to update Board policies in general. Leah looked at
the sections on hate crimes and discrimination, and believes there is
probably still room for three other policies, though the timing will need to
be discussed. The three are: a general policy on commitment to diversity and
college climate; a specific policy condeming hate crimes; a policy on
academic freedom to protect teachers and students at Gavilan. After much
discussion about timing and process, it was decided that Audren and Terrence
will ask at PCouncil whether the process can't be slowed slightly so we can
put in some of the Community College League of CA wording on diversity, Leah
will open this discussion with RMJ and Marty, as per a suggestion from J.
Keeler, and we will recommend briefly worded policies on the above three
goals to be established/included now, and work later on longer more specific
versions. This strategy will be checked with PC, RMJ, and Marty. Suzanne is
researching what other schools have.

Announcement of Cesar Chavez day; Veronica is thinking she could get a small
group of students, or more if we all help, to go. It is March 24 in SF, or
we could organize our own. Deferred so Veronica can be part of the
discussion. People took fliers.

Karen Warren sent some Teaching Tolerance materials that are available free
to us all.

The poster, convocation idea, and planning we would like to do for 2002-2003
were deferred.

3. Survey of campus climate.
Terrence explained Gavilan's participation in a pilot climate survey, along
with three other colleges. Results should be available in April. Meanwhile,
he has done some focused interviewing of students which he can share for our
planning process, as soon as Terrence types it up. He also said we could
explore interesting results with another survey or interview process if we
want more Gavilan information or different questions answered. Everyone was
grateful.

Meeting adjourned 2:45.