June 26, 2020

Dear Black and Brown Alumni,

I want to follow up on the Zoom meeting that we held a couple of weeks ago. I have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on our discussion as well as reading the postings on the Black at Loomis Instagram account. I would like to thank you for joining the discussion and for the postings as well as your many offers of assistance. The cumulative impact of both the discussion and the postings makes it obvious that we need to do much, much more to improve the climate for our Black and Brown students. I am both saddened and angry about the experiences too many of our students have had.

In my previous letter I laid out a number of steps that we will take over the next few months, and I want to provide you with a bit of a progress report on some of the steps taken so far. The summer recess provides us with an opportunity to put a number of things in place for next year and to review all of our policies and practices.

We spent considerable time at our most recent Trustee meeting discussing the issue of racism at the school. Some Trustees had either been on the call with Black and Brown alumni the week prior or had close knowledge of what had been said, so we were able to have a productive conversation about some of what we need to have happen. The Trustees have established a new committee on diversity, equity, and inclusion at the school to be chaired by Trustee Erik Cliette '84. The committee will monitor the progress in meeting the school's DEI goals as well as review reports regarding the handling of any issues regarding racism.
We will also establish a committee to analyze how bias may be influencing our disciplinary process and outcomes over the past few years. Committee membership will include BIPOC alumni as well as current faculty and students. The committee will report directly to me and the Board of Trustees. I anticipate that the committee will conduct its work during the 2020–21 school year and will issue a final report by May 2021.
As I noted in my June 10 email, the school will publish an annual report on diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice at Loomis Chaffee. As part of that report we are developing a dashboard of critical indicators, including race and ethnicity data for our students, faculty, staff, administrators, and Trustees as well as some historical data to provide a better sense of how the diversity of our community has changed over time. We will be sharing this report and dashboard with our entire school community, including alumni, in September. In the meantime, you can find demographic information about our 2019–20 student body in the Key Facts section of our website.
I have asked all department heads to review their curriculum and have had several follow-up conversations with faculty members. I, as well as the other members of the senior administration and department chairs, need to be far more prescriptive about what we expect to see with regards to inclusion.
Because of some late retirements this year, we have several open teaching positions. It is our top priority to hire additional faculty of color in these positions.
We have reorganized the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion headed by Dean Elizabeth Parada and have provided her with more resources. Elizabeth also will be working to form an alumni group to support our students of color.
We have asked the Kravis Center for Excellence in Teaching to assume the primary role in providing ongoing professional development to our faculty around issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Kravis Center will have additional personnel as they take on this responsibility and will include DEI discussions in new faculty orientation as well as in ongoing faculty development.
All faculty and advisors will participate in additional professional development around issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion before the beginning of the new school year. Faculty are required to read Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning and either White Fragility or Waking Up White before the beginning of school.
The Head's Administrative Team will be reading Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an AntiRacist and John Palfrey's Safe Spaces, Brave Spaces: Diversity and Free Expression in Education. We are also planning several guided discussions on these issues this summer.
Student orientation and prefect and resident assistant training will include more training around DEI issues. The curriculum for the first year and sophomore year seminars will focus more directly on these issues.
We will have a new protocol for reporting all instances of racism to the dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

These steps represent the beginning of our commitment to make the school fully live up to its promise of providing an outstanding education to ALL our students. The current state of affairs cannot continue—we have to do better. I hope that you will continue to share your stories and be in touch with any ideas that you have. I look forward to our ongoing conversations.

Sincerely,

Sheila