Keith Alford, Syracuse University’s interim chief diversity officer, sent a campus-wide email Tuesday afternoon with updates about several diversity initiatives SU has kickstarted since the spring semester. 

In years past, SU email updates specifically related to diversity haven’t been regularly scheduled or comprehensive. So it’s commendable that this update was thorough and included logistics including the date of the Disability External Review Committee’s next meeting. Including details not only makes initiatives more understandable and accessible but also bolsters a certain degree of transparency between SU and its students.

What the email is missing, though, is forward-looking information on future events to detail how students can best contribute to campus discourse by engaging with decision makers, like Alford, in public settings.

Including that information would add to the accessibility of initiatives mentioned by Alford in his email. 

Although plans mentioned in this update raise  several questions related to progress and implementation, SU’s efforts to share this information thus far, in the form of monthly emails following the Theta Tau controversy, have not gone unnoticed.  

As long as  SU continues to disseminate information regarding major campus plans on a regular basis, and officials encourage public, in-person discourse with students, emails like Tuesday’s are a step in the right direction for a university that needs better communication with its campus body. 

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Published on October 30, 2018 at 9:31 pm

Contact: opinion@dailyorange.com