Community principles

Diversity Statement

The course BIOE-75 Scientific Diving welcomes and celebrates the range of students' identities, preferences, and expressions. As a course with a focus on balancing basic dive safety principles with performing task-specific underwater scientific work, we are committed to creating a safe, inclusive, and respectful environment for students, instructors, and TAs.

We also adhere to UCSC anti-discriminatory practices throughout field prep, courses, and research.

Principles

The University of California, Santa Cruz expressly prohibits students from engaging in conduct constituting unlawful discrimination, harassment or bias. Course instructors, TAs, staff, and students have to be committed to providing an atmosphere for learning that respects diversity and supports inclusivity. We need to work together to build this community of learning. I ask all members of this class to:

• be open to and interested in the views of others

• consider the possibility that your views may change over the course of the term

• be aware that this course asks you to reconsider some “common sense” notions you may hold

• honor the unique life experiences of your colleagues

• appreciate the opportunity that we have to learn from each other

• listen to each other’s opinions and communicate in a respectful manner

• keep confidential discussions that the community has of a personal (or professional) nature

• ground your comments in the texts we are studying. Refer frequently to the texts and make them the focus of your questions, comments, and arguments. This is the single most effective way to ensure respectful discussion and to create a space where we are all learning together.

Difficult conversations

In our in-class and online discussions and dialogues, we will have the opportunity to explore challenging, high-stakes issues and increase our understanding of different perspectives. Our conversations may not always be easy. We sometimes will make mistakes in our speaking and our listening. Sometimes we will need patience or courage or imagination or any number of qualities in combination to engage our texts, our classmates, and our own ideas and experiences. We will always need respect for others. Thus, an important aim of our classroom interactions will be for us to increase our facility with difficult conversations that arise inside issues of social justice, politics, economics, morality, religion, and other issues where reasonable people often hold diverse perspectives. This effort will ultimately deepen our understanding and allow us to make the most of being in a community with people of many backgrounds, experiences, and positions.

Report and incident of hate or bias

The University of California, Santa Cruz is committed to maintaining an objective, civil, diverse and supportive community, free of coercion, bias, hate, intimidation, dehumanization or exploitation. The Hate/Bias Response Team is a group of administrators who support and guide students seeking assistance in determining how to handle a bias incident involving another student, a staff member, or a faculty member. To report an incident of hate or bias, please use the following form: Hate/Bias Report Form. 

In addition to a general statement, instructors may consider adding “tags” to specific course materials: