Office of Student Affairs to set up bias reporting form

The Office of Student Affairs is introducing an online reporting form for students to anonymously report their experiences with biases on campus.

The form will enable students to anonymously report their experiences with or eyewitness accounts of incidents relating to bias, which is defined on the Student Affairs website as “a preformed negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons based on their race, gender, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, natural origin, or gender identity.”

The Bias Assessment Response & Support website went live two weeks ago and lists phone numbers for reporting incidents until the online form is uploaded as an option. The form is set to go online within the week.

Lynette Merriman, assistant provost for Student Affairs, oversees Support and Advocacy, the department that handles bias reporting. She explained that a campaign would follow the release of the form to increase student awareness about the resource.

“The form should be up fairly soon, and when we do that, that’s when we can really start on doing a campaign throughout the university,” Merriman said. “We’re also going to emphasize some of the wonderful support resources that we have for our students.”

Merriman said campaign efforts will largely consist of increasing awareness through advertisements on campus, reaching out to cultural groups at USC, distributing educational resources and obtaining student feedback.

“I’m also working with a group of students who have been talking to other students about what’s the best way to communicate this to the university community, like, ’how should I capitalize on social media to communicate this?’” Merriman said. “But I think a good part of it is having conversations with students.”

Merriman listed out some examples of biases that can be reported with this new system.

“Racism is an example of bias. Discrimination is a form of bias; so are things like Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, oppression and so on,” she said, emphasizing that colleges across the nation grapple with these issues and USC is no exception.

USC’s Asian Pacific American Student Services as well as the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA received racist and misogynistic fliers that were sent anonymously in Spring 2014. The fliers contained offensive language and images directed at Asian Americans and, more specifically, Asian-American women.

The official response made last year by the Asian Pacific American Student Assembly, a student organization under Program Board, acknowledged the issue, stating that “[t]hough the United States has made institutional strides to promote equality, prejudices against APA [Asian Pacific American] women are alive and well” and that incidents like the flier would not be tolerated because, “[r]acial and culturally derogatory epithets do not have a place in conversations under any circumstance.”

Mary Ho, the director of APASS, declined to comment about the incident. She did confirm, however, that APASS gave the Office of Student Affairs feedback on the implementation of this reporting system and that the organization promises to promote the program.

“The existence of a campus bias protocol will open up conversations about what bias incidents look like and feel like for those who are not knowledgeable,” Ho said in an email to the Daily Trojan. “Targeted students and groups can begin to identify bias incidents when they occur and report it accordingly, now that there’s a structure in place.”

Though not sparked by any one specific incident, the bias reporting system was initiated as an effort to provide students easy access to the resources available and an outlet that consolidates all types of bias incidents to be reported.

“In the past, students would typically call DPS, [the Office of] Student Affairs, [the Office of] Religious Life, the cultural center[s] and a faculty or staff member,” Merriman said. “It was important that we make this easier for folks. This was not created because of any series of events. But what we’re realizing is that we wanted to do a better job educating students about reporting and making it an easy process.”

When students file a report, they will be asked whether they were the victim or a friend of the victim, when and where was the incident observed, if they would like to remain anonymous or not, and for as detailed of a description they feel comfortable revealing. There will also be an opportunity on the website to upload photos, for example, of a derogatory picture posted somewhere on campus.

Justice Haque, a sophomore majoring in broadcast and digital journalism, commends the efforts of the university to combat bias but has doubts about the system’s effectiveness.

She said that she thought smaller incidents were unlikely to be reported, but the system could help larger racial issues.

“I think people who have been discriminated against have known this their whole life — it’s not the first time,” she said. “If it were an extreme incident like a hate crime, it would definitely be reported.”

These doubts are valid issues that Merriman thinks should be addressed by advancing the development of educational resources.

“Some students might be saying things that may be perceived as biased and they’re not intentional,” she said. “So sometimes what they said is in fact very biased. We need to help students understand and realize the consequences of their actions since some students have not lived in diverse communities like the one we offer at the university.”