Staff, Student-Athletes Participate as Facilitators in Husker Dialogues

Lincoln, Neb. –  With over 3500 incoming students packing the Devaney Center, conversations were buzzing; thousands of students were engaged in deep conversations. These conversations filled the Devaney Center, but not about Husker Volleyball, or wrestling, or even gymnastics, but about diversity. The 4th annual Husker Dialogues took place on Thursday, September 6th, 2019. Husker Dialogues is designed to introduce first-year students to tools they can use to engage in meaningful conversations to help create an inclusive Husker community.

With four student speakers, each speaker spent moments revealing their personal story to the incoming Huskers, sharing how they were exposed to diversity and how they learned about Nebraska's inclusive environment, urging first year students to seek out opportunities to have these conversations. After the four speakers, students gathered in small circle discussions to talk about what they heard, and discuss ways to have discussions about diversity and inclusion. If you were to walk through the small circles, you would find hundreds of faculty, staff and student leaders leading these discussions as facilitators. There was a small group of facilitators, who unlike everyone else, had a very different mindset than others.
 
Facilitators who were planning to travel this weekend, who were planning their next practice in the same arena, and who were returning to the confines of Memorial Stadium after the event ended. These facilitators were our own Huskers, representatives of Nebraska athletics. Diversity and Inclusion Director DaWon Baker, Senior Director of Development Operations Mattie Fowler Burkhardt, and Academic Counselor Joann Ross, Ph.D. participated as facilitators, while former student-athlete Mikale Wilbon, and current student-athletes Dicaprio Bootle, Kurt Rafdal and Sierra Hassel volunteered as circle facilitators as well. Rafdal, Bootle and Hassel participated as facilitators with their class, Diversity in Organizations. Wilbon facilitated in addition to his colleagues from the Office of Academic Success and Intercultural Services (OASIS) where he's interning this semester. For Hassel, the experience was a great introduction to difficult dialogues for the incoming students. "It was a great opportunity for the 1st year students to have a chance to talk about their differences and begin conversations on diversity and inclusion," noted Hassel. "Letting the students know that they are heard and people want to listen, I think is very comforting when coming into a new environment."

For Diversity and Inclusion Director DaWon Baker, the experience showed how athletics has ties to the University's mission of celebrating diversity, even when it's not always present. "I was ecstatic that we had staff members who agreed to facilitate," noted Baker. "To see that we had student-athletes who participated and had the training and confidence to lead discussions surround diversity and inclusion, it was an extreme point of pride for us in athletics, it shows that we are aligned with the university, and diversity and inclusion specifically, and that brings us joy in athletics."

Organized by student affairs, Husker Dialogues is one of the premier diversity events that promotes diversity and inclusion for the UNL campus. You can find more events like it on UNL's webpage here.