Meeting Minutes
Diversity Committee
Meeting, October 11, 2005
Present: Eleanor Block (Chair), Amanda Clark, Eboni Francis, Linda Gonzalez, Deidra Herring, Beverly McDonald, Duke Morgan, Cyndi Preston, Charles Smith
Absent: Virginia Reynolds
Committee members felt that the library administration and others who hold meetings should avoid scheduling meetings during major religious holidays. Everyone needs to be sensitive to this issue and support people who need to take the time off.
Linda Gonzalez noted that Marilyn Willhoff is already looking at the library's corporate calendar and will be adding religious holidays. Linda has ask OIT to add these holidays to the university-wide corporate calendar. Cyndi Preston mentioned that the university multicultural calendar has all of these dates.
Cyndi and Amanda Clark volunteered to write up our recommendation, including a list of the major religious holidays. The statement that Cyndi and Amanda prepare will come back to the full committee for discussion at our next meeting.
Absent: Virginia Reynolds
Workshop on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) issues
The GLBT workshop will be a brown bag given on Monday, October 17, 2005, 12 noon-1 p.m. in Room 210, Main Library. Sara Kozel will be presenting the workshop to the group. Eleanor Block is in charge of the publicity. She has already sent several announcements/reminders to liball and will continue to do so through the day of the workshop. Larry Allen prepared a special edition of Quick Notes highlighting this workshop and will put something in OSU Today. Eleanor will give a general introduction at the workshop and Duke Morgan will introduce Sara Kozel.
Meetings scheduled during religious holidays
A number of people have contacted Eleanor as Chair of the Diversity Committee, either in person or via email, about scheduling meetings on major religious holidays. The matter was brought to the Committee because the University's website says OSU tries "to acknowledge different forms of spirituality" and because one of Ohio State's goals as stated in their Diversity Action Plan is "To Be a National Model for Diversity."
Committee members felt that the library administration and others who hold meetings should avoid scheduling meetings during major religious holidays. Everyone needs to be sensitive to this issue and support people who need to take the time off.
Linda Gonzalez noted that Marilyn Willhoff is already looking at the library's corporate calendar and will be adding religious holidays. Linda has ask OIT to add these holidays to the university-wide corporate calendar. Cyndi Preston mentioned that the university multicultural calendar has all of these dates.
Cyndi and Amanda Clark volunteered to write up our recommendation, including a list of the major religious holidays. The statement that Cyndi and Amanda prepare will come back to the full committee for discussion at our next meeting.
Committee websites
The former website for the committee will be de-activated by Betty Sawyers. The committee's current website is libdiverse.
Diversity Committee mission statement
Committee members reviewed our current mission statement as given on the libdiverse website. After some discussion (e.g., one sentence mission statement, multiple sentence statement, one sentence statement (what we believe) followed by an explanation of how we will implement it), Charles Smith volunteered to work on a revised mission statement and the objectives for fulfilling our mission.
Campus of Diversity Workshop
Eleanor and Charles recently attended different sessions of the Campus of Diversity Workshop, which was launched by the Anti-Defamation League and Abercrombie & Fitch to promote diversity and empower faculty, staff and students. Eleanor and Charles both found the workshop very effective and useful and especially liked the small discussion groups. Eleanor felt that this workshop is something that the Diversity Committee should sponsor. After hearing Eleanor and Charles describe their experiences, committee members agreed that this was an important workshop that should be offered to library employees. Eleanor briefly spoke to Brett Beemyn of Student Affairs at her workshop session about the Libraries sponsoring a Campus of Diversity Workshop. She will contact him again to make arrangements for a presentation.
Next meeting
The next scheduled meeting is Tuesday, October 25, 1:30-2:30 p.m. in Room 102, Main Library. We will talk about our Winter Quarter schedule of committee meeting dates.