During a meeting promised by administrators two weeks ago, University of North Florida professors Dr. Rudy Jamison and Dr. Christopher Janson led a discussion with students, faculty and staff Thursday night to create a plan for how the campus community can come together and create a stronger UNF. 

Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President Dr. Richmond Wynn opened the discussion with a welcome to those in attendance: an assortment of UNF students, faculty, staff and even a couple of University Police Department officers. Before diving into the purpose of this second discussion, Wynn reviewed some of his “big bucket” points that he gathered from the last one. 

Those main ideas included some of the following:

• Access for transfer students and treatment of transfer students at UNF
• Diversity of employment and representation in employment at the university
• A lack of training for students, faculty and staff 
• A current lack of inclusive teaching strategies
• The general sense of African Americans and other minority students not feeling welcome
• Not enough student voices being heard before decisions are made

“What we gleaned from everything you’ve said, is some changes need to be made,” Jamison said. “We want to give you the tools to navigate and negotiate your change. We want you to own the tools. . . We need to be able to act as a collective.”

The professors offered some avenues that everyone could take to get the most out of the experience, including what they called a “learning exchange.” They detailed why the power of the university should be placed in students’ hands. This way, students can tailor and design their own experiences while at UNF and beyond. 

“We don’t want to just change it for us,” Jamison said with passion. “We want to change it for everyone behind us.”

Joining the discussion, Janson dove deeper. It’s one thing to say you value justice and equity, he said, but it’s another to actually value it. 

“You’re the ones experiencing these barriers,” he said to the students in attendance. “We need to learn from you as an institution.”

Giving everyone a taste of what a future learning exchange would look like, everyone in the room paired up for a “virtual learning walk.” During those next 15 minutes, each pair got to know one another and were asked to share about a time at UNF that they felt unseen, unheard, disrespected or not valued. 

Sitting back down, the room was asked what they thought about the experience. One student said that the walk allowed them to hear the experiences of someone older than them. 

“It felt as if time was a little more slow and it felt like, for a few minutes, I could truly talk,” another participant said. 

Closing out the discussion, the topics moved toward what the future will look like if real change is to be made at UNF. One important question that must be asked, Janson said, is “asking who’s in the room and who isn’t.”

Getting white people into the conversation, face-to-face with everyone currently there is what would drive real change, and everyone in the room appeared to agree. 

Dr. Jamison, Dr. Janson and Dr. Wynn said how, in the coming weeks, everyone would receive an invitation to a learning exchange where more thoughts, suggestions and plans for improvement could be shared.

The general theme? “Black students want to be heard,” as one student put it. 

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