1. What Diversity Means to Us
2. Diversity at Colby: A Historical Commitment
3. What Diversity Requires of Us
4. Why Diversity Should Engage Us

WHAT DIVERSITY MEANS TO US
Colby has adopted the term "diverse" to describe the kind of community we hope to build and maintain on Mayflower Hill. Our definition of what constitutes diversity may--and probably should--change over time, but when we promote diversity now we are expressing our commitment to an inclusive campus community, enriched by persons of different races, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, economic backgrounds, ages, abilities, sexual orientations, and spiritual values; to ensuring equal opportunity for all who work or study here; to sustaining a climate of civility, mutual respect and tolerance; to promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, including unpopular ideas; to an open and inclusive governing and decision-making process; and to broadly educating students for life in a complex world.

Achieving diversity requires much more than the celebration of differences. To be committed to diversity is to recognize:

• That some social groups in the United States have historically been subjected to systematic and invidious discrimination and continue to experience the negative impact of discrimination. These groups include racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities as well as women and the poor.
• That some groups in the U.S. have been and continue to be under-represented and under-served in academia, especially at the most prestigious institutions, both among students and in the highest ranks of faculty and staff.
• That there generally are fewer and less strict social conventions restraining the uncivil, disrespectful, intolerant, and even violent treatment of members of subordinate¹ social groups.
• That foreign cultural groups are especially vulnerable to hostile or romanticized stereotyping, and individuals in the U.S. from those groups experience discrimination based on cultural misconceptions.
• That compared to middle-class and wealthy individuals, poor people in the U. S. have fewer high-quality educational and employment opportunities and less social respect, and they have fewer opportunities to participate in decision-making bodies and processes.
• That in light of the increasingly diverse character of American society, as well as the globalization of nearly every facet of our national experience, multicultural and international understanding are essential to every student's successful functioning in his or her future workplaces and in civic life.

DIVERSITY AT COLBY: A HISTORICAL COMMITMENT
Diversity is at the core of liberal education at Colby, and its roots run deep in our history.

Before the Civil War, Colby was home to one of the first student abolitionist societies; later in the nineteenth century, Colby was the first all-male college in New England to admit women. More recently, Colby has worked steadily to expand opportunities for less-wealthy students through need-based financial aid, to offer protection against discriminatory treatment and sexual harassment, to enlarge the sphere of participatory decision-making, and to promote full-bodied diversity through the Pugh Community Center, multicultural programming, and diversity-focused curricular opportunities and requirements.

Colby's recently completed strategic plan contains a large number of initiatives intended to enhance diversity at the College. These include efforts to effect change in the stated policies and common practices of the College, as well as in the institution's overall culture.

WHAT DIVERSITY REQUIRES OF US
The College's culture reflects our broader national and international culture, marked by the division of people into dominant and subordinate groups. We must pay particular attention to the differences that have the most powerful adverse effects on people's lives. Those differences manifest themselves in our daily interactions, as well as in our widespread institutional practices and policies and can make Colby more challenging and difficult for some. We must find ways to overcome dominant-subordinate divisions in the service of greater inclusion, respect, and recognition throughout the institution. This involves, inevitably, changes in institutional policies and group practices, curricular innovation, a shift in campus climate, and changes in individual behavior. It also requires both str ong leadership and broadly shared responsibility in pursuing these diversity initiatives.

Therefore, at Colby:

• We recognize that we have a special responsibility to acknowledge and, where possible, prevent individual and institutional manifestations of all forms of discrimination and exclusion, those that are subtle as well as those that are highly visible.
• We take it to be part of our educational mission to prepare students for well-informed and fair-minded citizenship, both in their home countries and in the global community. To that end, we seek to make the curriculum, educational programming, and student body international in scope. The aim is not just to celebrate international differences, but also to present more accurate conceptions of foreign national cultures. We also seek to enhance the curriculum and educational programming with respect to those differences of race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and class that have occasioned the most significant injustices.
• We seek an enlarged capacity for empathy and mutual respect across social divisions, including race, gender, ethnicitiy, nationality, economic background, age, ability, sexual orientation, and spiritual values. To this end, we will vigorously promote a climate of civility, mutual respect, tolerance, and freedom from fear. We acknowledge a special responsibility for improving the climate for subordinate social groups. We all must deepen our appreciation of the complexities of identity and guard against prejudices that may be deep and subconscious.
• We will not unfairly exclude, on the basis of certain differences, people who might learn, teach, and work at Colby; and we will work to end the under-representation among students, faculty, and administrators at Colby of groups that have historically been excluded from equal opportunities. We will endeavor to make our curricular, social life, study abroad, student services, and residential life opportunities attractive to members of historically under-represented and under-served groups. And we will continue to seek and use financial aid resources to help ensure that economic class does not function as a barrier to educational opportunity.
• We will continually work to ensure that historically marginalized U.S. social groups and foreign national cultural groups are understood and respected; this includes continuing to make available diversity-enhancing programs of study, off-campus opportunities, and extracurricular programming. It also includes ensuring that members of those groups have the space, visibility, and participation in institutional decisions that will sustain their full inclusion.
• We will seek to create an organizational environment that is open and inclusive in its fundamental outlook and practices. While visible and representative diversity is crucial to the College, we know that the culture of the organization--its dominant values, assumptions, written and unwritten rules, decision-making processes, etc.--provides an equally important manifestation of diversity.
• We will forge a strong institutional commitment to the value of diversity. As a recent American Association of Colleges and Universities report puts it: "This commitment must pervade the institution from senior administrators through faculty and staff: it must be both communicated and demonstrated to students. It cannot be solely the work of the student affairs staff, a small group of faculty, or those who are directly served by diversity programs."² Members of college communities have what the report calls "alert antennas" for the differences between lip service and pervasive values.

FOOTNOTE:
²(Daryl G. Smith et al., Diversity Works: The Emerging Picture of How Students Benefit. Washington D.C.: AAC&U, 1997, p. 39).

WHY DIVERSITY SHOULD ENGAGE US
There may be no way to craft a comprehensive statement about diversity at Colby, or to plan for all future exigencies. But this statement and the initiatives described in our strategic plan represent our current best thinking about this critical area of our shared endeavor.

All members of the Colby community are urged to engage this issue. We will be successful in our efforts, and we must be successful, only if we commit ourselves as a community to this effort. Each of us--in our work environments, in our public interactions, and in our personal relationships--must aspire to the goals we have set for ourselves. Our integrity, as well as our success as an institution of higher education, demands nothing less.