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2022 Oz Equity Challenge

To Register

To participate, please provide your email by completing the Google form linked here. We will use this only to gather emails to send links to the topic, resources, and reflection questions for each day's topic.

Overview

The Institute for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Transformative Practice (The Institute) at SUNY Oswego is offering the Oz Equity Challenge as a way to bring SUNY Oswego together in learning about all forms of social justice.

The 21-day challenge is designed to create dedicated time and space to build more effective social justice habits, particularly those dealing with issues of race, power, privilege, and leadership. The daily modules are intended to  raise your awareness, change your understanding, and shift the way you think and behave. The challenge as a whole is designed to allot time and space for participants to gain knowledge and build their social justice practices. 

In our mission to foster an environment that respects, embraces, and promotes cultural humility, civil discourse, and active engagement we want to provide this opportunity and these resources to support understanding of issues of race, power, privilege, and leadership. We hope that all participants approach each activity with an open mind and willingness to develop a better understanding of each topic presented. All are encouraged to join, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, background, and where you are on your personal journey toward equity.

Challenge Logistics

  • Each daily module will be posted to the Oz Equity Challenge page and archived as we go
  • Each day, registered participants will receive an email with a link to the day’s module and a link to share responses to related reflective prompts
  • Each day, a link to the day’s module will be shared via Oswego Today

For each day's topic we will provide a few short reflection questions. Your responses will be anonymous and are provided as a way to help you to think more deeply and personally about each day's topic. Responses will further give us ideas about conversations the campus might be interested in having more broadly. Check out our social media for prizes and giveaways for participating in the challenge.

Day 1

Getting Started

The goal of the Oz Equity Challenge is to help participants become more socially aware, compassionate, intentional, and engaged with our mission of striving toward a more inclusive campus.

Day 2

Cultural Humility

SUNY Oswego is home to people of diverse cultures and backgrounds. It’s important to understand the concept of cultural humility as it pertains to interacting and engaging with others who may not share the same identities as you. 

Day 3

Social Identity

Social identity refers to people's self-categorizations in relation to their group memberships (the “we”). These categorizations are often assigned to us or something we are born into.

Day 4

Implicit Bias

Implicit bias, or unconscious bias, refers to attitudes and beliefs that occur outside of our conscious awareness and control. An implicit bias may be intertwined in a person's conscious beliefs without them realizing it.

Day 5

Exploring and Addressing Bias

Each of us holds some form of bias, whether we know it or not. In a lot of circumstances, we are not aware of the implicit biases that we may hold.

Day 6

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are defined as “fixed, overgeneralized beliefs about a particular group of people.” 

Day 7

Microaggressions

Microaggressions are “brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioral indignities..."

Day 8

Interrupting or Addressing Microaggressions

Understanding and addressing microaggressions can be challenging because the realization that we hold biased world views can feel uncomfortable. 

Day 9

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to emotionally understand what other people feel, see things from their point of view, and imagine yourself in their place. 

Day 10

Student Achievement Gap

The Student Achievement Gap refers to the disparity in academic performance between groups of students across different demographics.

Day 11

LGBTQIA+ Equality

Like race and socioeconomic status, inequities for people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQIA+) can be seen across many dimensions, including education systems, and the workplace.

Day 12

Gender Equity

Gender equality is a fundamental human right and that right is violated by gender based discrimination.

Day 13

Ableism

Ableism is the discrimination of people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. The concept of ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people need to be ‘fixed’  and defines people by their disability. 

Day 14

Equity for Indigenous Peoples

Native American, or Indigenous, people have lived on what is now the United States before its colonization. The U.S. government systematically removed Indigenous people from their homelands and attempted to force their assimilation to white culture.

Day 15

Equity for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders

It’s important to recognize that Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) encompasses a wide range of countries, ethnicities, nationalities, and identities. 
 

Day 16

Equity for People Who Identify As Latinx/e

The Latinx/e community is the largest ethnic group in America today and a major force contributing to reshaping the economic, social, and cultural fabric of our society.

Day 17

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must all aspects of one’s identity that can marginalize people. 

Day 18

Racial Identity Development

Racial Identity Development has been described as a dynamic developmental process that occurs over time. 

Day 19

Structural Racism

Structural racism is the system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways, to perpetuate racial group inequity.  

Day 20

Anti-Racism

Anti-racism is a process of actively identifying and opposing racism. 

Day 21

How To Be An Ally

Allyship is using your power, privilege and influence to make the cause of a marginalized group(s) your own. 

Last Day

Wrap Up

Thank you to everyone who took time out of their days to actively participate in SUNY Oswego’s first annual Equity Challenge!