05/07/2025
Congratulations AJ, on winning the Strength and Resilience Award! 🥇
Q: What motivates you, as a student or organization, to get involved in inclusion and equity work on campus? What type of impact do you (or your organization) hope to see in DePauw?
A: We as students often talk to each other about issues or problems we have around campus, and either don’t know who to go to for help resolving them or simply don’t go about trying to resolve them for a variety of reasons. But the reality is, leaving these issues unresolved creates equity gaps and allows for affected students to feel excluded from the campus community, especially when they are students with marginalized identities. During my time at DePauw I worked with and founded several organizations that strove to create spaces where students could air their concerns while also providing them opportunities to collaboratively advocate for the changes they wanted to see made to the student experience. The biggest impact we made was empowering more students to engage and participate in the democratic processes the university seeks to promote and implement. As I leave DePauw, I hope students continue to gather and work together to advocate for solutions to the issues and problems they identify.
Q: What advice would you give to students who want to get involved to build a community of inclusivity & excellence?
A: Say hello to people you don’t know and talk to them even if you don’t think you have much in common with them. Make friends with people who have different backgrounds, beliefs, and interests from you and invite them to work with you to find solutions to uncommon problems. When people who are different from each other collaborate the advocacy and solutions to problems take on new dimensions that they couldn’t if you worked alone, and that’s what creates a community of inclusion, understanding, and excellence. Additionally, talk to your professors and create relationships with administrators. They can be advocates and collaborators as well, and they can provide important insights into pathways you can take to find solutions, like-minded students, and support your community.
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