Mercersburg Academy’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, which is comprised of Mercersburg faculty and students, exists to cultivate a safe community where everyone is encouraged to be their authentic selves.
In a world where social norms are evolving rapidly, how might we at Mercersburg improve our policies, practices, and programs to strengthen our community as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusion?
First established in 2018 for the 2018-2019 school year and led by Selas Douglas, former history faculty, a task force began leading students, faculty, and staff in conversations and planning as it related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. This group was charged with exploring what Mercersburg has accomplished related to DEI, thinking about what DEI currently means at the school, and considering what it looks like for our school moving forward. The work continues now under the leadership of interim director of diversity, equity, and inclusion (and English faculty member) Leela Woody.
While much work has been done to educate our community on diversity, equity, and inclusion, the work is ongoing, and we commit to building our DEI initiatives as a community. We invite you to review a current list of actions the school is taking and look at some of the programs the school has been fostering over the past three years.
Leela Woody
Interim Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Current Actions
From our foundational work with our task force, we created a DEI Committee made up of multiple subcommittees that will continue the work of the task force into the foreseeable future. Actions the school is currently taking include:
During Family and Alumni Weekend in 2019, Mercersburg hosted its first Black student alumni reception to celebrate 55 years of Black student integration and 30 years of the Black Student Union; the weekend was supported by the school but coordinated and executed by our Black alumni, led by Tonya Rutherford ’90. At the event, our alumni suggested that we begin efforts to raise funds to establish a scholarship honoring Tom Leslie ’66, the school’s first Black graduate.
The inaugural recipient of the Tom Leslie ’66 Memorial Scholarship will enroll at the school in fall 2021. With ongoing support from our community, we will grow this scholarship fund to expand our commitment in the coming years. If you are interested in supporting this scholarship, please contact the Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations.
The school is committed to building opportunities for courageous conversations by selecting annual themes around which programming, community reading, and curriculum are designed. The concept was introduced to the community in 2017. Themes have included: Immigration (2018-2019); Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (2019-2020); and Making a Difference (2020-2021). Learn more about Courageous Conversations.
The school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, established under the leadership of former faculty member Selas Douglas, the school’s first director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, identified faculty and staff training as our highest priority. To that end, as the school entered into our accreditation process, we selected this as the singular focus of the Sustaining Excellence accreditation protocol, which prompts a school to identify a strategic initiative, conduct a research project on the implementation of the initiative, and present its findings to other schools.
In recent years, we have made a commitment to the diversification of our faculty and staff. We will continue to seek dynamic educators from diverse backgrounds to join our community, and we will call on our community networks to help us with this critically important commitment. In addition, the Board of Regents has announced a commitment to creating a board that is more reflective of the community they represent. We have much work to do on both of these fronts.
The school has announced a commitment to partnering with our Black alumni in building an alumni mentoring program for our Black identifying students. s. Developing a protocol to this concept that prioritizes the safe engagement between alumni and students will take time. In the meantime, we launched affinity webinars this fall for students to engage with alumni specific to race to provide safe places for honest dialogue for our students, while also leveraging the benefits that relationships with alumni can foster. This is especially important as we recognize that our faculty demographic is not yet reflective of our student body.
The school has already identified areas of opportunity for our curriculum to evolve to be more reflective of a diverse and changing world. One such area is the work of our history department. In spring 2020, a history class on race was presented to the Academic Office; that course was approved as an elective and is now one of our first official courses propelling us in our initiative to move Beyond the AP. Advanced Studies in Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. was offered for the first time this academic year.
As our country pleads for an end to racism, we at Mercersburg Academy join the chorus of voices in clearly stating that black lives matter and by condemning all forms of racism and bigotry. To our students, parents, faculty, staff, and alumni of color, I want you to personally hear me say that your Mercersburg community stands with you, we love you, and we will endeavor to take action alongside you as we always seek to represent, in all that we do, the unique culture that is Mercersburg that we commit to promoting, both on and off of our campus.
- Head of School Katie Titus P ’20, ’23
Student Clubs and Organizations
Mercersburg faculty and student-run clubs offer many opportunities to engage in courageous conversations.
Asian Student Union
Black Student Union
Humans of Mercersburg
Latinx/Hispanic Student Union
Rainbow Alliance
Women’s Activist Club
Affinity Spaces
Affinity spaces on campus provide a community and group for students with shared identities to gather, celebrate, discuss, and support their identities. Led and supported by faculty members that sit on the Affinity Space Committee, which focuses on considering the structure and mission of the spaces, these spaces aim to affirm our students. Currently, our spaces include:
Adoptee
Asian
Black
International
Latinx
LGBTQIA+
Multiracial Heritage
Trans/Enby
LGBTQIA+ Policy
Established in early 2021, the LGBTQIA+ Policy Committee is comprised of students and faculty from residential life, school culture and the DEI Committee to consider the equity and inclusion of our LGBTQIA+ identifying students. This committee aims to identify strategies and protocols to create a culture of belonging for our students in the LGBTQIA+ community.
Adult Ally Group
Established in late 2020, the adult ally group is led by Allison Stephens and centers around conversations about allyship to folks with marginalized identities. Working in tandem with the DEI Committee, the group identifies topical conversations and works to find ways to serve as true allies and co-conspirators in DEI initiatives.
Resources
The school’s community-reading program ties into each school theme. More information on the 2020 program can be found here. Recent book selections included:
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika Sánchez
The Far Away Brothers by Lauren Markham
Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front by MJ Hegar
Far from the Tree by Robin Benway
The Woman's Hour by Elaine Weiss
Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle
Recognizing important anniversaries in the history of the school is important. Read stories related to the following milestones.
At a Glance
of our students receive financial aid (30 percent is the boarding-school average)
of our students are international (representing 39 different countries)
of domestic students identify as students of color