1. README

Purpose

If you are reading this document, you likely understand the necessity of advancing racial equity within an institution or university. Despite this necessity, racial equity work is extremely challenging and often comes with a unique set of barriers, many of which are presented by the institutions themselves. Making real progress often requires shifting power, money, and changing the status quo, all of which are commonly antithetical to how universities and institutions operate. Although barriers to change exist in every system, it is important to remember that every system was created and every system can be changed. Every system that exists that disenfranchises or harms groups of people were created by people, and people can change any system that was created.

Our group has learned invaluable lessons about working within and around ingrained and resistant academic institutions and culture and we want to share these lessons with anyone interested in advancing racial equity at their institution. This repo will contain documents that explain simple steps for getting started, common barriers one may encounter and how to tackle them, as well as an abundance of materials developed by AVDS that can be used as template materials (including surveys, standard operating procedures (SOPs), onboarding materials, bylaws, Code of Conduct, etc).

We are still continuously learning how to radically and meaningfully engage in racial equity work and certainly do not know all of the answers, but we hope our material helps you in your work.

Pie in the sky goal

Ultimately, this repo may serve as a foundation for making AVDS a national group with local chapters.

ADD explanation for how to post a comment/issue so that people know how to contribute/ask questions

Add link to comments sections to each page for easy accessibility