Comment on A deserved pain? by dalya88

I like how you highlight the fact that growing up in a disadvantaged area will create obstacles and challenges in your life that will make you want to immigrate to other developed countries. All those aspects need to be discussed in education. Students need to be aware of the outside world so once they get a chance they can actually make a difference. Thanks for sharing!

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Comment on What Counts as Inclusion? by tapputu

Oh believe me, we’re working on getting bathrooms! But, when people in key positions of power don’t want to do so they need only cite a building code, the cost, not having a proper location, etc. While there are discussions of making sure “new” buildings have accessible restrooms, the university thus far has appealed to “well, it wasn’t included in the original blueprint of the time so…” or in the NCB stuck a lovely faculty ID swipe access requirement on the one in that building.

We shall see how things progress in the coming years and we really need to update that map! I believe that’s the one that was created using maps of buildings. Some students are trying to work on a more up-to-date that would include accessibility information more blatantly.

Comment on What Counts as Inclusion? by alexpfp17

This struggle was a minor plot of the movie Hidden Figures, where the black scientists at NASA were forced to walk across campus to find a bathroom. People watching the movie must have thought to themselves, “how terrible, glad we don’t do that now”, yeah…

On a side note, this has a somewhat obvious but expensive solution. Build more accessible, single-use bathrooms. VT spent $20 million on renovating the baseball field, there are new buildings going up across campus – invest a bit in renovating bathrooms.

They should also make much stricter standards for new building construction. Every new building should include single-use, accessible facilities.

On a side-note, they need to do a much better job advertising the existence of existing bathrooms. There is a nifty google map, but almost nobody has heard of it:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1IM4GyPr-p9bo8zW_MEavm8guyyk&hl=en_US

Comment on Improving Classroom Performance through Diversity by Jake Keyel

I thought this point was very interesting in the post as well. I also have typically let students pick their own groups because when I was an undergraduate I didn’t like being forced into groups with students I didn’t know. But, in light of the reality of implicit biases it does seem some measures could/should be taken to ensure students aren’t consciously or unconsciously grouping themselves based on biases.

Comment on Inclusive Pedagogy by Jake Keyel

Your post identifies an issue which I think Nancy Fraser’s work on justice in the 21st century might shed some light on. She has a book called Scales of Justice in which she writes that to achieve justice it is necessary to have recognition (diversity), redistribution, and representation. Each of these three aspects are necessary but not alone sufficient to achieve a just society. Diversity and recognition of those formerly excluded is important but without other changes, economic redistribution, equal access to education, healthcare, jobs, etc. and political representation for everyone to determine the contours of that redistribution, diversity does threaten to remain a “buzzword.”

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Comment on From Drones to Organ Donation We Cover it All by Iris

As much as I envy your job right now, I totally do understand how challenging it is to regulate class debates. Even more so now, topics that students might be interested in, could quickly escalate into full blown out classroom wars. Perhaps, a better approach is to let your students submit topics they might want to discuss in the next class to you, then you filter these topics and then ask students to rank the filtered topics to show what they want discussed in class. This might save you from being put in uncomfortable mediator positions.

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Comment on WHO TEACHES SMALL ANGELS? by Iris

This post indeed makes me realize how hateful the world has become and is becoming, because of how we are brought up. When I was in my country, I will see middle eastern tourists with beards and the women with veils and I would exclaim how beautiful their culture is. This is because, I was brought up thinking that everyone has a culture depending on where they grew up and this made us all unique in different ways and even made the world more beautiful. The last time I went to Kroger with my Egyptian friend, an old lady asked her what she was doing in a Christian country? How this old lady could ask that question simply beats my mind and to justify it with Christianity,further worsens the case. Who taught this woman to be that divisive? Her parents or her neighbors? And how come the first thing that comes to my mind when I see someone different is ‘unique’? Is it that I am also unique as I am an international woman of color in America, or is it that I was brought up differently?

It hurts to see the future ones, raised with this much hate. So much hate that she will feel entitled to approach you and dare to beat you. This is indeed very sad. Embrace your uniqueness, Shi!