Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion

Diversity is all the ways that people are different and the same at the individual and group levels. Even when people appear the same, they are different. Organizational diversity requires examining and questioning the makeup of a group to ensure that multiple perspectives are represented.

Equity is the fair and just treatment of all members of a community. Equity requires commitment to strategic priorities, resources, respect, and civility, as well as ongoing action and assessment of progress toward achieving specified goals.¹

Accessibility is giving equitable access to everyone along the continuum of human ability and experience. Accessibility encompasses the broader meanings of compliance and refers to how organizations make space for the characteristics that each person brings.

Inclusion refers to the intentional, ongoing effort to ensure that diverse individuals fully participate in all aspects of organizational work, including decision-making processes. It also refers to the ways that diverse participants are valued as respected members of an organization and/or community.

An ongoing, active process of acknowledging and a willingness to learn about other people and how to respect their cultures, etc.

Commonly used to mean people of color (non- white), the term can encompass other identity groups not originally, consistently or well-served by US higher education, such as LGBT persons, people with disabilities, women, non-native English speakers, first generation college-goers, lower economic classes, veterans, students younger or older than the traditional 18-22 years, non-Christian religions, etc. As with other aspects of systemic inequity, the term refers to longstanding patterns of unequal access, retention and success; however, in specific contexts, other identities can be under-represented or under-served.

A system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time. Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead it has been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.