NAIT’s Campus Life released a Diversity and Inclusion Survey hoping students and staff will share their on-campus experiences through the confidential survey.
“The Associate Vice President decided that doing a diversity and inclusion project was going to be a priority for Campus Life and through that project we decided we needed to do a survey,” said Margret Christianson, NAIT’s Manager of Student Engagement. “Because at this point we really don’t know what we don’t know about what students experiences are like on campus or what staff experiences are like on campus related to diversity and inclusion.”
Christianson is one of the leads on the Diversity and Inclusion project. She says that they have been getting good feedback because of Pride Week.
“I do actually think there’s been some good conversations happening around Pride Week because of the survey. Which is actually really encouraging. But it wasn’t necessarily an intended outcome to have those two things aligning, but I think it was nice. Nice serendipity for us.”
NAIT’s fourth annual Pride Week was held from March 19 to March 23. Pride Week celebrates NAIT’s diverse community with several events like the Pride Walk on Tuesday. After the walk was a rally where a panel of NAIT experts talked about LGBTQ2S+ mental health.
NAIT’s Student Association reserved a room for the weeklong event to act as a safe space for students. Staffing the room were members of the Pride student club and by volunteers who have taken NAIT’s Safe Spaces Training.
Other events included a session about challenging homophobia and transphobia with NAIT’s Student Resolution Officer, a drag show presented by HOMO-cidal and a safe spin class.
