One Pingry Priority: Be An Antiracist School In the midst of the country’s movement against racial injustice, most recently sparked by the senseless murder of George Floyd, members of the Pingry community created the @blackatpingry Instagram account where current and former students share appalling, inexcusable, painful experiences. These incidents reveal a broken school culture of institutionalized racism and microaggressions and have led to a new focus on accountability on the part of administrators, faculty, and staff, as well as other aspects of School culture that must change. While some diversity and inclusion initiatives were already being discussed last school year, Pingry has now made it a priority to become more than simply “not racist”—to become an antiracist institution. The School has taken steps to make its priority a reality, including: The Administrative Team selected How to Be an Antiracist, by National Book Award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi, to be the Faculty and Staff Autumn Book Read prior to a discussion in November.
> Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Gilberto Olvera P ’29 was hired in February and joined Pingry this summer as a member of the School’s Administrative Team, ensuring that DEI is prioritized in all aspects of School life to create “real and long-lasting change.” > DEI Department staffing has expanded to include Assistant Directors in the Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools as well as Athletics.
> An Antiracism Task Force has been created and charged with examining all aspects of life at Pingry. The group includes administrators, students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and parents. > Speaking and Listening Forums have given groups in the school community— students, faculty and staff, alumni—an outlet to share their concerns, frustrations, experiences, and questions.
A forum was also held for students, faculty, and staff to process their reactions upon hearing the news that no charges would be filed against the police officers who murdered Breonna Taylor. > The curriculum, professional growth opportunities, admissions, and hiring and retention processes are being reevaluated in phases.
The Pingry Review will cover DEI in more detail in the Winter issue.
USED WITH PERMISSION OF NAIS/COVER ARTWORK BY EIKO OJALA
How to Achieve Diversity in Leadership Lower School Director Dr. Thu-Nga Morris, who also joined Pingry this past summer, co-wrote an article for the Fall 2020 issue of Independent School magazine (published by NAIS, the National Association of Independent Schools), titled “Sponsorship: Diversifying the Pipeline of Emerging Leaders.” It highlights key findings from research she conducted—under the mentorship of Dr. Howard Stevenson—for her doctorate in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. In the article, which examines the challenges of expanding the racial and gender diversity of heads of schools, Dr. Morris and
Dr. Stevenson advocate for career sponsorship of women and people of color. “Unlike mentoring, which assumes a supportive role and is more akin to counseling,” they write, “effective sponsorship enhances the professional skill set, credibility, and visibility of an employee, and it must lead to the subsequent promotion of an employee.” Dr. Morris and Dr. Stevenson further write, “. . . white sponsors, even more so than people of color, must take active steps to regularly challenge their biases against people of color and exercise their influence to promote more people of color to headships.”
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