Yale student initiative analyzes prejudices in arch. schools

by sadia_badhon | August 11, 2020 6:52 am

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Students and alumni from the Yale School of Architecture[2] (YSoA) have created the Visibility Project[3], an initiative to analyze the “deeply entrenched prejudices and biases that exist within architectural institutions,” beginning with their own.

“In attempting to quantify incidents of prejudice, discrimination, or preferential treatment, we seek to understand our behavior not as individual acts but as part of a system,” said the Visibility Project. “By highlighting inequities in our learning environment, we hope the Visibility Project will help promote introspection, create actionable goals, and facilitate the continuing dialogue between the administration and the students. Our efforts to engage with these inequalities will help us produce an honest reflection of where the school is and where we could be.”

Based on the research data, the group presented the following nine recommendations to YSoA’s dean Deborah Berke and the school’s associate deans:

1. Issue a statement of solidarity from the administration for this project.
2. Ask all faculty to engage with and reflect on this study.
3. Make sensitivity training mandatory for faculty members.
4. Work with Equality in Design (EiD) and the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) to diversify the curriculum.
5. Provide more support and resources to international students, especially those who do not use English as their primary language.
6. Implement better systems of resource distribution, such as a fair and transparent process for teaching fellowships and graduation awards.
7. Address the problematic faculty behavior identified in the survey.
8. Establish a timeline for increasing Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) faculty to 50 percent in the core studio sequence.
9. Provide sustained financial support for student groups dedicated to equality and social justice.

The project team includes Liwei Wang (project director), Betty Wang (design and development), Iris You (editor), and organizers Araceli Lopez, Christina Zhang, Christine Pan, Jessica Zhou, Lilly Agutu, Pik-Tone Fung, and Sarah Kim.

Source URL: https://www.constructionspecifier.com/yale-student-initiative-analyzes-prejudices-in-arch-schools/

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