Graduate students across campus are exploring their personal and collective identities during Diversity Month, a month-long sequence of events for graduate students occurring throughout this May.

Diversity Month is an expanded version of an earlier celebration of diversity, “Diversity Week.” According to Wendy Ni ’12 Ph.D. ’17, outreach coordinator of the Diversity Advocacy Council (DAC), the event was expanded to a month for multiple reasons, including a desire to incorporate more events that are initiated by students and student groups.

“[The change was made] partly so that we could accommodate a larger number of different events, and partly so we that can maintain the momentum of increasing awareness and talking about diversity over a longer period of time,” Ni said.           

According to Ni, the four-week slate of programming features three general types of events. The first category includes events that transcend group boundaries to find common themes across communities. Such events include a book club that is meeting every week throughout the month. The second category are events that cut across boundaries but are focused on specific communities, such as an event on racial bias and dating in queer communities. The third category focuses on an individual community specifically, with events such as the Mothers in Academia Networking Lunch.

One of the first events held was the Active Allyship dinner, according to Gabriel Rodriguez  M.A. ’14 Ph.D. ’17 and co-chair of the DAC. This event involved groups from across campus talking about what it meant to be an ally of that group, as opposed to a member of that group, and what it meant to be an ally of diversity in general. Featured groups included Stanford Hermanas in STEM, Queeritualilty and the Stanford Asian American Graduate Student Association, among others.

“The Allyship event is a good example of how DAC sees its mission,” said Eduardo Muñoz-Muñoz Ph.D. ‘17, co-chair of the DAC. “It’s not just another group of people that are working for diversity, but it’s also creating bridges and conversations among groups that are already well-established.”

Despite experiencing some challenges compared to previous years, the organizers largely found the same logistical hurdles as they had in previous Diversity Weeks.

“A lot of the overhead tasks are still similar – organizing our members, organizing our affiliates, publicity, sort of providing support, providing a structure for people to pass on their experiences and get feedback and evaluation,” Ni said.

According to Rodriguez, the change has brought benefits at the same time. The new program allows events to play out over a larger time span, thereby addressing previous concerns that the events were too compressed. The larger time span also reduces pressure on organizers and lets the organizers collaborate with any student or group that is interested in conducting events during the month.

As for the future of the diversity celebration, Ni expressed interest in collaborating more closely with undergraduate groups that work to promote diversity. Ni noted that DAC is a subcommittee of the GSC, and therefore must consider the needs of the graduate community. However, Ni hopes to reach a broader audience in the future.

“I think there is definitely more room for collaborating and expansion in a way that is mutually beneficial to grad students and undergrads, because, you know, a lot of undergrads do go on to be grad students, and they will be able to take the skills that they have developed to transform their communities, and that’s something that we can benefit from as well,” Ni said.     

Rodriguez expressed hope that people would work to continue the program even after the current organizers leave their positions. By building bridges and promoting awareness of DAC this year, Rodriguez hopes that the organizers will leave a lasting impact for the future.          

“[Our hope is] that people are driven to continue these events, whether it’s a week or a month, just being able to do these events is really important for awareness and advocacy, because diversity is still worth talking about on this campus,” Rodriguez said. “And it’s worth talking about in the grad community.”

Contact Skylar Cohen at [email protected].