U of Iowa expects to create bias response team this semester

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The chief diversity officer of the University of Iowa said her office plans to have a bias assessment response team in place on campus by the end of the current semester.

The proposed team — which would be known by the acronym BART — would address complaints of racial or other bias on campus concerning incidents that “skirt the line between a policy violation or even a crime.”

“I’ve been thinking about it since I’ve been here,” said Georgina Dodge, who has been serving since 2010 as UI’s chief diversity officer and associate vice president. “We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years, but it was a matter of having the capacity to do it.”

With help from the Office of the UI Vice President for Student Life, Dodge said UI officials will meet with various stakeholders over the course of the semester, with the goal of having a bias assessment process in place by May.

"It’s one thing to look at other institutions … but we really need to be specific to our own culture," Dodge told the Press-Citizen on Wednesday. "And that is something that is going to mean pulling everybody in and having a discussion."

Although UI’s team will be tailored specifically to the institution, Dodge said it will be modeled somewhat after the BART in place at Ohio State University, where she previously had directed the Department of African American and African Studies Community Extension Center.

The calls to create a bias assessment team at UI have grown louder from some student groups over past 18 months — especially after a visiting UI art professor displayed a controversial KKK-effigy on the Pentacrest. Although the artist said the unauthorized sculpture was intended to raise awareness of ongoing racial violence in the U.S., many students viewed the sculpture as a threat.
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