03 From Aspiration to Action This process of brave reflection and engagement revealed a community that believes in the value of diversity and inclusion, but that has not fully embraced the necessity of racial equity and justice. A community that recognizes it is both a historically and predominantly white institution (Bourke, 2016) but does not see the impact of that reality on communities of color. A community that has built a solid foundation for supporting minoritized students through individual centers and positions but has not formalized the structures required to assure institutional systemic accountability. A community that aspires to be but that has not yet become actively anti-racist. This story of aspiration without action is compounded by the lack of a compelling vision for what we are trying to achieve in terms of racial justice and equity. We understand broadly that we want to be more actively anti-racist but we have not defined what that looks like for Bentley. In our current institutional vision, we state that we will create a national model for business-focused education that develops leaders for positive change and provides transformational, lifelong value to students, alumni, the business community, and society. This is our opportunity to ask ourselves: What would this vision look like if it were written to include a commitment to racial equity and justice? The Task Force sought to answer these questions by developing a series of aspiration statements that begin to articulate a vision for who we want to be as a community. These statements are based on three main strategic areas of priority that we see as essential to address if we want to truly become a more anti-racist campus. This is not an exhaustive list, but rather what we have identified as the most important areas to address at this point in our transformation. We have also articulated related areas for investment based on the themes that emerged from our discussions to guide the community in identifying next steps in our collective journey. As you review these three strategic priorities we encourage you to reflect on what it would be like if Bentley were to achieve the ideal state in the aspiration statement. How would this impact your experience of the campus? Your peers’ experiences? Search the areas of investment for items that resonate most with you and identify things that you can do in your areas of influence to take action to impact them. Many ideas were shared for suggested action steps and we have included those ideas and descriptions of our thinking in the appendix as an additional source of inspiration for further action.
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