July 6, 2020
Safe Zone offers advanced workshop July 9
The Kansas State University Safe Zone program, in the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs, invites faculty and staff to an advanced workshop from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, July 9, via Zoom. Register for the workshop on Qualtrics.
The advanced training is for those who wish to develop further in their learning about the history of exclusion, implicit bias, aggression and language that further divides and separates.
Safe Zone also will host a separate introductory workshop on Wednesday, July 8. The introductory workshop is for those who wish to learn more about K-State's resources across its varying campuses toward becoming authentic allies for safer and welcoming environments.
For the July 9 advanced workshop, the Zoom link will be sent out to all participants the night before the workshop.
The advanced workshop will help all — faculty, staff and university students — understand and internalize the benefits of being globally aware, confident and competent. It will help people understand how they can assist in the creation of the systems and processes to make institutional changes and how to move from simple verbal statements to modeling and practicing equitable representation of historically excluded populations into the K-State culture — a place where Black lives really do matter.
Safe Zone exists to provide open and affirming "spaces" throughout the K-State campus where individuals affected by marginalization, discrimination, violence, aggression and other forms of exclusion can go for support and assistance. K-State faculty, staff, students and community members can become Safe Zone allies as a way to show publicly their commitment to understanding human differences and promoting equity across campus and community.
Safe Zone continues to be part of K-State's efforts to create open and affirming campuses since the 1970s. Safe Zone was created to help those facing sexual orientation discrimination. Revitalization of the initiative in 2002 created a more comprehensive and ever-evolving Safe Zone effort to fit the needs of current K-State community members.
Allies become educated to assist and support those who come from a variety of backgrounds and identities often affected by exclusionary acts, such as intimidation, micro and macro aggressions, discrimination, implicit biases, LGBTQ-related concerns or sexual violence.
For more information, contact Debra Bolton, director of intercultural learning and academic success, at dbolton@k-state.edu, or Brandon Haddock, student services coordinator at the Department of Multicultural Student Affairs and LGBT Resource Center, at bhaddock@k-state.edu.