A new strategy, recently approved by the College Board, will prioritise diversity and inclusivity, focusing on improving the support Trinity gives to LGBT staff and ensuring that students leave the university with an “intuitive” sense of equality.
Implementation of many aspects of the strategy have been rolled out across College already, pre-empting this formal approval, but the decision to officially approve the strategy represents an important commitment towards achieving the report’s goals.
Devised by the Director of Diversity and Inclusion, Tony McMahon, after collaboration with various groups across College, including the Equality Officer, Aoife Crawford, the Disability Service and the Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Research (WISER) among others, the report focuses on diversity issues across Trinity.
The strategy, according to McMahon, speaking to The University Times, “pulls what our key policies are and puts them all together”. This includes measures such as College’s Gender Identity and Gender Expression Policy – a formal recognition that “college will treat all trans staff, students, alumni and service users with dignity and respect and seek to provide a work and learning environment free from discrimination, harassment or victimisation” – and the College Equality Policy, which outlines College’s “commitment to promoting equality in all aspects of the College’s activity: employment, education and service provision”, among others.
“We were really good on policy but that we needed to take care that that policy actually translated into some action on the ground”, McMahon said, something that the strategy will aim to achieve through its seven main pillars, including policy development and implementation and ensuring diversity is promoted at Trinity’s governance level.
The new strategy, McMahon said, will ensure that Trinity doesn’t simply comply with current equality law, but covers a wider range of diversity issues.
“It’s about hearts and minds, not about compliance. If people are doing it because they feel they have to, then you’re losing”, McMahon commented. The strategy focuses in particular on gender inequality in Trinity and the inclusion of LGBT students and staff into the College community.
Two recent reports on gender trends in Trinity revealed the persistent gender inequality that exists among the university’s staff, where women make up 16 per cent of chair professor positions, compared to 84 per cent of men. At the current rate of change, according to the report, this gap would not be solved until 2098. Last year, Trinity’s proposed introduction of tenure-track, a new employment model for entry-level academics, faced criticism for its impact on female researchers, with the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Louise Richardson, expressing concern that such a model would “adversely” affect women.
McMahon noted that the rate of progress had been slow regarding the promotion of women to senior positions, but expressed his hope that this would improve over the coming year.
In relation to LGBT staff and students, McMahon said there had been particular challenges over the records of LGBT individuals. Unlike gender, there are no clear records of the number of LGBT students or staff in Trinity, making it more difficult to measure the success of Trinity’s diversity policies.
The strategy, he said, focuses on making College a welcoming place for LGBT staff: “It’s about how inclusive the workplace is for LGBT people, how comfortable they are coming to work, what’s their conversation like over coffee on a Monday morning? Is this as comfortable for them as it is for me?”
Last year, David Parris, a former lecturer in the Department of French, lost a challenge in the European Court of Justice against Trinity. The court’s decision, which has faced criticism since it was made in November, found that Trinity had not discriminated against him on the grounds of age and sexuality. Speaking to The University Times in an interview in February, Parris was critical of the Equality Office’s handling of his concern over Trinity’s pension regulations: “What I would have liked it to be is akin to a College tutor, and if some nasty department or individual wrongs you in College, the theory is your tutor takes your defence, even if it was against the College.”
The strategy, McMahon said, will ensure that “students who leave this college and go on to be future leaders don’t need to be reprogrammed, that they get it, and intuitively think ‘inclusion’”. The strategy will include partial redesigns of curricula and lectures to greater reflect diversity, with McMahon pointing to the example of studying more ethnically-diverse writers in English or, in research, being more aware of other genders. He points to the example of the historic failure of car manufacturers to use “female crash test dummies”, which has led to higher risks for female drivers.
The strategy also focuses on some lesser-highlighted issues, and includes a commitment to revising College’s treatment of Irish Sign Language, as well as tackling ageism and improving the inclusion of mature students.
Gender-neutral bathrooms will also be prioritised by Trinity, an area that has received particular focus from Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) this year. At a meeting of TCDSU’s council in December 2016, the union voted to adopt a motion mandating that the union provide gender neutral bathrooms in every building in College.
