Last week, Northwestern’s Dean of Students Office launched Respect NU, a new website that consolidates information on University policies regarding bias incidents and informs students how to report such incidents.
Dean of Students Burgwell Howard said the website is something he wanted to implement this year and campus discussions surrounding bias incidents that have occurred in recent months accelerated the process.
“We’ve wanted to have a site available to help students understand their options for some time now,” Howard said. “It was on my list of things to do this year, to get that set up and in the conversations we’ve been having on campus this year, particularly this winter, students really wanted me to fast-forward things so that we could have it available during this academic year.”
The website offers a guide on three ways to report an incident: online, by phone and in person. It also provides links to University policies, resources and frequently asked questions regarding bias incidents.
“Bias incidents are non-criminal activities that harm another because of that person’s membership in a classification, such as race, color, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, age or religion,” according to the website.
Howard said the site did not provide significant new content. Instead, it is meant to centralize resources that were already available to the NU community.
“One of the challenges we have at Northwestern is not that things don’t exist, it’s just helping students navigate all the resources that are here and know how to the find information,” he said. “The idea of the Respect NU site was in part to consolidate and aggregate the various resources so it made it easy for students but also made it easy for people to find a way to let us know about problems and concerning behavior.”
At a forum Saturday to discuss progress on the administration’s diversity initiatives, Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Telles-Irvin also discussed the new website.
Telles-Irvin said Respect NU has already received one report. She has acquired funding for a new position, a director of campus inclusion and community, who will oversee the University’s new bias incident response program, do bystander training for students and staff and develop cultural competency workshops.
“We want to make sure that students get the support and are heard, and feel like there’s a place they can go for those situations,” she said. “We do not want students to feel alone.”
At Saturday’s forum, Telles-Irvin and University Provost Dan Linzer clarified the University will continue to use its EthicsPoint reporting service, but EthicsPoint is intended for faculty and staff who have compliance complaints, while Respect NU is for students.
Howard said the University will publicize the website in materials for incoming freshmen, but it is equally important to make sure current students know about the website. He said he has been mentioning the site in conversations with students whenever possible.
“We’ll be making sure that returning students know how to report incidents and where to go for information, because oftentimes some of the issues that students have been referring to this year, be they things that are criminal or what people have been terming ‘microaggressions,’ we can’t work to improve our community unless we know what the problems are,” Howard said. “What’s been clear is that students have been talking amongst themselves or holding in issues privately and there are some times when we need to know about those things as soon as possible so that we can take some corrective action.”
