Advancing Social Justice is every university’s most essential purpose. Each member of the MIT community must recognize the important role they must play whether they like it or not. Maintaining dossiers of anonymous denunciations is a start, but abstract fear alone cannot guarantee universal Belonging. And recruiting fellow students as undercover agents to infiltrate student organizations can only go so far.
MIT’s Promoting Inclusive Environments (PIE) workshops, which are regularly run by the Institute Discrimination & Harassment Response (IDHR) Office, now include advanced bystander intervention instruction. Your attendance at one of the scheduled September sessions is strongly recommended and will be noted in your file. These workshops include interactive activities and can cover a broad range of topics including microagressions, bystander intervention, perspective taking, and power dynamics.
If you see something, say something! Staying prepared to butt into other people’s conversations and social interactions helps condition everyone to carefully monitor their language and behavior, never knowing when they might face the long arm of consequence culture.
Please sign up here to reserve you slot, which counts toward your cumulative DEI compliance score. Just think how virtuous you will feel each time you call out a malefactor for, say, misgendering someone, asking where they’re from, or failing to acknowledge their privilege.