{"id":10932,"date":"2020-04-06T16:55:58","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T21:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=10932"},"modified":"2025-04-17T22:41:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T03:41:13","slug":"an-approach-to-understanding-and-designing-an-inclusivity-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/an-approach-to-understanding-and-designing-an-inclusivity-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"An Approach to Understanding and Designing an Inclusivity Statement"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Process for Developing an Inclusivity Statement <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The inclusivity statement is an increasingly prevalent genre in academic and nonacademic spaces. Inclusivity statements have become staples for most academic institutions as well as many departments and programs within those institutions. Individual programs that take the initiative to develop inclusivity statements often aim to articulate how inclusivity operates within their very specific contexts. In this post, we share our experiences of developing a writing center’s inclusivity statement to help others who are committed to developing their own ever-evolving inclusivity statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our process of developing an inclusivity statement at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison Writing Center began in earnest in the fall of 2016 with a group of undergraduate Writing Fellows and a graduate instructor who raised the idea after identifying an escalation in discriminatory action and hate speech on campus<\/a> and across the nation<\/a>. And while conversations about the Writing Center’s inclusivity statement continued during this time, developing language for the statement has taken on an increased focus over the past year or so. For the purposes of this post, then, I will detail some of the key moments stemming from a larger Writing Center initiative between Spring 2018 and Fall 2019. The process for developing our writing center\u2019s inclusivity statement can be broken down into three main phases:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Addressing practices affecting inclusivity\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Gathering community input to determine needs and desires<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Developing and revising the statement\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The following six steps break down these phases into action steps that this writing center took to develop its own inclusivity statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


    Step 1: Form a Committee <\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    During Spring 2018, a working committee formed to uncover the general principles that governed the inclusivity statement genre. This committee was made up of graduate students with administrative positions at the Writing Center: Annika Konrad, Calley Marotta, and Rick Ness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This committee\u2019s first step consisted of compiling an archive of statements from writing centers, academic departments, and private organizations, including the University of Kansas Writing Center\u2019s Mission and Diversity Statement [broken link removed], the University of Iowa Sociology Department\u2019s Statement of Inclusivity<\/a>, and the Gill Foundation\u2019s Diversity and Inclusivity Statement<\/a>. The committee selected these particular models because of their institutions\u2019 status as predominantly white and tied to larger histories of subjugation and coercion, as well as these particular organizations\u2019 approaches to distinguishing diversity from inclusion and their articulation of action-oriented approaches to inclusivity. In particular, our committee found themselves indebted to the University of Washington\u2019s Statement on Antiracist and Social Justice Work in the Writing Center [broken link removed] and the people who worked on it for their synthesis of the general principles garnered from the models above. Drawing on these models, our committee agreed on three principles that would shape our writing center\u2019s own inclusivity statement: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    1. Evidence of practice<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Work with the community<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Commitment to the statement as a living document.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n


      Step 2: Work With Campus Partners<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

      The committee then reached out to some of the Writing Center\u2019s partners on the UW\u2013Madison campus. The committee felt that they did not and should not have a monopoly on the language or ideas that shaped this document\u2014and, in fact, they wanted the inclusivity statement to be informed by people who had actually experienced marginalization on campus and who had training on how to navigate such marginalization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The committee sought guidance from three local partners: the Multicultural Student Center<\/a>, the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center<\/a>, and the McBurney Disability Resource Center<\/a>. The committee organized meetings with representatives from each of these centers to discuss the development of our inclusivity statement, generating a script with some general questions to ask: <\/p>\n\n\n\n