Equality, diversity and inclusion is everyone’s business

Guest post by Emily Connor, Students’ Union President 2014/15

I’ve always been lucky enough to be part of a large family of strong and independent women who have truly been an inspiration to me as I grew up. Going to University was something I wanted to do, and I never really thought much about my gender being a contributing factor. Same again when I ran for President; it was something I wanted to do, and therefore, taking the advice from my family, should go out and do it.

Personally, I have always been passionate and an advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion across all sectors, initiatives and roles. It’s not necessarily a job for one person, but something that everyone can and should be contributing to the development of. What is important, is that everyone sets and leads by example at every single level in order to set and change the tone of their environment.

For Sheffield Hallam, this means that everyone, from academics, to helpdesk staff through to our very own Vice Chancellor has a part to play in creating inclusive environments for our students and staff to operate and learn in. I’ve been partly involved in the recruitment of the new Vice-Chancellor, and it is imperative that the leadership of Sheffield Hallam recognises the importance of equality and diversity in learning, in spaces, in and in the culture of the organisation. This not only means demonstrating these behaviours him/herself, but inspiring and encouraging others to do the same in order to filter through to everyone else in the institution.

We have a beautifully diverse student population at Sheffield Hallam, and this is something we should celebrate and embrace more openly. As a Students’ Union we have begun work to tackle discrimination in sport, started campaigns on the BME attainment gap and looked intrinsically at the training we offer to our societies and sports teams. But this is just the beginning, and a lot of really exciting work is yet to come, but we can’t do it alone.

We need students to be open minded. We need lecturers to create safe spaces in their classrooms where we can challenge each other, we need support for our international students to enable them to stretch into their academic studies and we need to ensure that we adequately support our disabled students. We need commitment from the top to help to tackle all of these things.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a support network that helped me to get where I am now, and has kept me here despite its challenges. Not everyone is as fortunate, and that’s where we need to focus next.