Marcus Moore
So sauce truth is when you recognize that you have some original ingredients, you have something out of the bottle. These are the techniques that you have learned through your programs through your credentials, your certifications, your degrees, all of those are valuable things and basis for the work that we do. And you must go and add some other elements to it. And so as I’m describing this to Krischanna, she was like, Aha, we’re gonna call that sauce truth. And poof, we created something that was very, very portable, very easy to understand.

Heather Shea
Welcome to Student Affairs NOW the online learning community for Student Affairs educators. I’m the host of today’s episode Heather Shea. Today on the podcast, I am thrilled to be joined by Marcus Moore and Krischanna Roberson to discuss a counter strategy to out of the box DEI work or as Krischanna and Marcus call it How to Not. You might be wondering if you saw the title of the episode, not what well, we’re gonna unpack that today. In today’s episode, I got a taste of this concept at an incredible extended program session at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity NCore in early June in New Orleans, and I knew like immediately I had to find a way to extend this conversation to an episode on our podcast. So before I bring in our guest today, let me tell you a little bit about our channel if you’re new to Student Affairs NOW, Student Affairs NOW is a premier podcast and learning community for 1000s of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We hope you’ll find these conversations make a contribution to the field and our restorative to the profession. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays Find us at studentaffairsnow.com on YouTube or anywhere you listen to podcast. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast for more information about our sponsor. As I mentioned, I’m the host of today’s episode Heather Shea, my pronouns are she her and her and I am broadcasting from the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the Anishinabek, three fires confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi peoples, otherwise known as East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University where I work. As I mentioned, earlier, I had the opportunity to engage in an experience at NCore not a program an experience in June, in this session called How to not and so I am so excited. Let me bring in our two panelists to introduce you to Marcus and Krischanna. Thank you both so much for joining me for the episode. But we’re gonna just start with because kind of a bit about your background and how you’re coming into this conversation today. And I’m going to start with Krischanna.

Krischanna Roberson
Thank you so very much Heather excited to be here and thank you for wanting to learn How to Not I dig it. Hello, my name is Krischanna Roberson. I use she and her pronouns and I am an award winning racial Strategic Coach and the founder of collaborative consulting collabo date, which means working and learning collaboratively to elevate yourself and others is a global organization that we focus in on. DEIB. What most folks known as no as diversity, equity and inclusion. I’m a black woman born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I currently reside in Marietta, Georgia, because no one really lives in Atlanta. So even though they say Atlanta, that’s really not what it is. I love this work of DEI it is who I am. It is through my soul, my nervous system. I love it, as well as long walks on the beach, talking about CO Conspiring Against Racism while sipping on an ice white chocolate mocha. But I’ve been doing this work for about 20 years now. And it gives me great joy and pleasure when I get to partner with awesome folks like Marcus who do this work in connection and collaboration with me.

Heather Shea
Marcus, thank you so much. Krischanna. So, so great to and I’m sorry I mispronounced your last name and the intro Roberson. I’ll make sure and correct that. Marcus, welcome. Tell us a little bit about you.

Marcus Moore
Well, 44 years ago, my mom started calling me Marcus. And that’s the way it’s been ever since I was born in Germany to a black father. We moved to the United States at a very young age. And so that’s where I developed this accent. I live in the ancestral homelands of the creek, the Chattahoochee and the Muskogee and a place that is today known as Columbus, Georgia. That is adjacent to Fort more, which I was thrilled when I found about the Rename used to be Fort Benning, who was a Confederate General and we don’t like honoring people who killed US soldiers for the cause of slavery. So we changed that just a little while ago, Fort Morris around the corner from where I live. I’ve been doing the sort of racial equity work in some form or fashion for a long, long time been doing it professionally for about 10 years now. And in that capacity, a coach leaders executives, administrators of all stripes in order to advance their work towards racial equity. My office is called Nia Palmares. That is the agency that I own and operate. And in that place, we take a very creative approach to our work. And I think it’s that creativity that caught your eye as we’re doing this work.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I, I can’t even describe this session. So I’m going to not even attempt to you all created it. And so I would love to hear Krischanna, you tell us a little bit about what you met, what you mean by How to Not? And what what led you to both collaborate with Marcus, but also like thinking about this work? bringing this to the world?

Krischanna Roberson
Oh, yes. How to Not? Well, I think about it in the lens of when folks decide to do this work of DEI. It is this continual evolution, because the work is personal first. Right? We all evolved from when we first started and doing this work, remember it? Oh, that was a great idea. Or, Oh, that was just terrible. Never do that again. So being able to understand how to not so that way we can figure out how to. And when we think about how to not. It is this. As I mentioned before, it’s you have to be be willing to co conspire, because if you conspire holding on to who you are as a person, allowing your creativity to just burst like a bubble out. While conspiring against organizations that tell us well, you got to do it this way, you have to stay within compliance. Doing dei work is a very different path. And much of you as personal so you got to be able to feel empowered to be you and who you are in all the various intersectionality that shows up and be empowered to move and make different decisions because folks aren’t gonna get equity stylized, after within a timeline, things aren’t going to get fixed when we say, Oh, we’re going to do the strategy that is for 10 days, none of that works within this work, because it’s driven by beliefs. So when we talk about how to not, it’s about seeing the beauty in the balance and who you are understanding that rest, and being angry is okay. Now, how do we liberate ourselves through that by doing different things. And when, particularly with Marcus and I, we’ve seen this work through so many different levels, across K through 12 systems, across higher ed systems, across advertising agencies, across governments, it shows up in different places. And depending on where you are within a particular industry, you got to understand how to not a little bit differently. So when Marcus and I were kind of talking through, oh, well, what are we going to do is in court, we got to do something, we really started digging into how we do the work in a way that allows us to be who we are, but also allows us to bump up against the systems that sometimes prohibit us from getting in and blowing it all up. I often like to say, Don’t allow yourself to turn into somebody who wants to rip their face off, rip somebody’s face off their face, because then the work won’t happen. And how to not is a way to be able to look at the beauty of the challenges. The beauty of creativity, and the beauty of who we each individually are in order to understand there’s another way to do this.

Heather Shea
Wow. Marcus, what would you add? And if you have a specific example or experience that motivated you to join this conversation, I’d love to hear about that too.

Speaker 3
For sure. So it’s the way Krischanna a name that we come through this work initially from a personal level rather than a professional level, right? And so as marginalized people of color, particularly in spaces of higher ed, we found ourselves more and more marginalized, the more successful we were, and the higher level of of degree we were trying to achieve. Right. In that space. We recognize higher ed is exists as a way of developing stability, and conformity to particular standards, and these standards have been successful in many times in many places, in many ways, however, not for every one. So what we’re looking at are different ways of being in those spaces. As students, as administrators, and as consultants, we exist as transformational entities in places that live for stability. So let me offer this piece of bait for for the listeners in this space, if you are doing DEI work, and you’ve done it for a year, six months, a relatively short term with an organization, you may come to the point as both Krischanna. And I have, where the powers that be will say, we’ve been doing this work for six months, a year, two years, and we’ve invested this many 10s of 1000s of dollars, where are our measurable results? Now, what we are not allowed to say out loud, but very much still is our thought bubble is now how many millions of dollars have you spent over decades and decades, some institutions for centuries, developing situations that were in need of racial equity, in need of gender equity, in need of ability, equity, in need of an ability to recognize the plurality of who we are and what we bring to the table? You have invested so much in creating systems that marginalize us and so little in places that that accept us for who and how we are. And so with that little with what we already know, the wisdom that we had before we showed up on your campus? How do we utilize that to transform our experiences and our spaces? How do we save our lives with that? Shana and I both live in the state of Georgia, and just a little while ago, the Senate race that that had a lot of people’s attention. pitted, a man who can barely pronounce his name is frequently dishonest, disingenuous, and let’s just say less than consistent, versus the pastor, the pastor of MLK one and twos church. And here in the Bible Belt, it was it was a frog’s hair that separated them at the ballot box. And we wonder, Where is the meritocracy? That we were supposed to subscribe to were the rules that we were supposed to follow? How does this this setup? Tell us to do right? Be right act right? And then get the rewards? Obviously, yes, sometimes that works. And sometimes it just does not? How do we show up in a way that is self preserving. Because this sort of foolishness can drive you nuts. And in fact, it almost did for me, I had to take a sabbatical get out the country for a little while and step away. And that’s where the the language of how to not want more.

Heather Shea
That was a particularly powerful part of your session, when you brought up all the slides and pictures and rotating through it was, it was a moment. And I’m going to describe this method here in a little bit more detail. Because I think one of the things that really struck me about your session, you know, we knew when you arrive at a conference, you get this massive program book and then Corps is hefty. And you’re flipping through to try to decide how, how am I going to spend this block of time. And your session happened to be an extended three hours session on a Saturday morning starting at eight o’clock or 830 or something? Yeah, and it was an early it was a anywhere in New Orleans, right? So I was like, Oh my gosh, people who are coming to this session are committed and excited. And I was absolutely blown away with the way you all framed and engaged us as an audience. So I’m really I’m curious about that, because you talked about the story about the Senate race. And you did it though, through this really embodied mixed media interdisciplinary, there were a lot of interactive components that you brought in. It was like no session I ever have been to at and core or any conference, frankly. And so I’m curious about like, you all are drawing from, you know, many different bodies of knowledge and, and knowledge is, you know, talk a bit about how you can, you know, conceived of and crafted that space, you know, and what you kind of are also disrupting by putting out a session at this very, you know, academic conference that really pushed push back at some of those conference like conventions.

Marcus Moore
When Krischanna and I first met, I asked to how many blocks away from the data center of Brooklyn, were you born and raised? And I think she said four and I was like, Yeah, I believe that which is particularly valuable, we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip hop. That means so much to both of our lives and the way that I’ve talked about how we bring our wisdom, our pre collegiate wisdom to college. When I do seminars, for the longest time, we end up in this place, and perhaps you’ve been there where the small groups are talking amongst one another. And the emcee needs to bring the whole room back together. And I’ve been in those spaces where the the person in charge says, if you can hear me clap once, if you can hear me clap twice, and I’m like, Nah, I’m a grown man ain’t doing that. This is for preschoolers, we need something different. So I developed this technique. And I remember very vividly that walk Krischanna was in the audience of a group that I was facilitating, I use music as a cue to bring the group back together. So when you hear this song, come on, you don’t have to stop like it’s red light, green light, but you got to wrap it up. Krishna is very serious. She has some serious about her work, she was deeply engaged with whatever partner she was collaborating with, at the time, she’s saying, etc, etc, etc, etc. I hit the beat from one of the biggies classic. And that done and then and I remember, she threw her head back, arms up, and it was right back in the party like it was 1997 all over again, right? The engagement, that that we bring to the space is essential for people’s experience, it lets them know that they’ve seen that they’re heard that the references that we’re using to explain that thing, really connect with who and how they are. And that brings not only an element of entertainment and Verve to them, but an element of joy and authenticity. For us. That was one of the platforms that we wanted to bring to the space where we could teach

Krischanna Roberson
love and we also know that in my previous bodies, I’ve been a coach to K through 12 teachers, I’ve been faculty at higher ed right. And I think about when in the words of Drake Started From The Bottom now here, I think about when it started and all of the things that I screwed up on to because of how we’re taught we’re taught as educators that we have to be x speak a certain kind of way and a big piece of that is removing who we are right remove emotion remove sharing bits and pieces of who you are remove mistakes, pretend to be pretend that perfection exist. And as I evolved, it was important to look at I want to be in a space into which I can see feel and hear myself and part of that is not with a lecture apart that is not with someone just theorizing everything, show me how this works for you. Show me how this failed. Show me how you fail forward. Show me that my that my cultural aspects are just as important. Biggie is just as important as Mozart. Right. Dr. Maya Angelou is just as important as Steinbeck. And being able to see over time that it’s okay to just bust open the box and be who you are. It’s always so thoroughly important. And this has been the norm for Marcus and I oh yeah, I was just gonna say him, we’re gonna be talking to you, you’re gonna get all Marcus and I also love to use the term sauce, you’re gonna get all this sauce, right? However that sauce needs to be fit, if you will spicy and you need it at that level or you real mild, we’re gonna give it to you all the ways for you to be able to connect. That is the most important thing be able to connect to what we’re saying pick up pieces and use it in the ways that you see fit.

Heather Shea
So go deeper on that concept of sauce a little bit because that was a mote that was one moment of many that I was like, this session is feeding everything about what I’m what I’m kind of needing at this moment. So what do you mean by sauce?

Marcus Moore
Well, Krischanna came up with this term, sauce truth. After after we were having a conversation about how we bring our I’ll keep the language consistent for ease our pre collegiate wisdom to the campus, right. We know that in our culture, whatever grocery store, you go to whatever farmers market, whatever it is, if you go buy a bottle of sauce, particularly barbecue sauce, and you put that naked sauce on whatever, Chicken Pork beef tofu you got on the grill. That’s unacceptable. Because we know by law, that barbecue sauce is an ingredient in barbecue sauce, you go get barbecue sauce and add to it your Cayenne, your black pepper your beer your would ever it is to make it your sauce, right? It is the way back to hip hop, we can all take the same clock wallabies and put different laces on them time up different ways mix and match the colors, we can do all sorts of different things with the the ingredients we have been given collage is an element of black history and black culture from the beginning. So now till tomorrow, right, you take pieces that already exist and you make something new and original out of them, we are hip hop, and that is hip hop. So sauce truth is when you recognize that you have some original ingredients, you have something out of the bottle. These are the techniques that you have learned through your programs through your credentials, your certifications, your degrees, all of those are valuable things and basis for the work that we do. And you must go and add some other elements to it. And so as I’m describing this to Krischanna, she was like, Aha, we’re gonna call that sauce truth. And poof, we created something that was very, very portable, very easy to understand. And we made a little sidebar inside the seminar. Like before we get into the concepts and the theories. How about your trade, some of your recipes? What do you put in your barbeque sauce or your your egg roll dip your, your french fry magic? What what what happens? And I learned some tricks in New Orleans that using in my kitchen today. So I’m glad for all that.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I totally wrote down some of those ideas. And I mean, I think this is the idea that’s like this out of the box, right? The what’s in the jar is an ingredient in but like we have to bring ourselves to that right, we have to show up who we are with our lenses. And that ends up having an effect on kind of what the end product is. And it’s going to be customized for each individual who’s a part of the but I love that idea of sauce truth because it it absolutely. You know, and particularly in di work, like there’s a lot of stuff that’s been done over and over and over, you know, some of that is okay to still use, maybe some of it is like, we’re no longer ever going to take that bottle out of the fridge again. But I think, you know, the ability for those of us who kind of come into this work as creatives to, to adapt, and then change and build upon. I think that’s kind of what I what I took away.

Marcus Moore
We also recognize that as a limiting trap. So within conversations in DEI, there’s a lot of gravity and magnetism around what are known as best practices. What did you see happening at XYZ campus that we can now do at our campus? The cold reality is that no campus has developed full on racial equity. And so at best, what you’re doing is copying an ineffective strategy. In the name of progress, perhaps that strategy is less ineffective than the one you currently have. But it’s not the gold medal winning standard, right? Because racial equity, gendered equity, lived equity is not a thing that we have achieved anywhere. So to copy what has already been done, is mimicry of mediocrity. What we’d rather do is use that as inspiration. Say, Alright, so here’s some elements of it that we saw as as productive and valuable. But when we add to what exists, then we can make something better, right? We experiment moving forward. It’s it’s sauce, truth and policy.

Krischanna Roberson
DEI work is rolled, dipped and fried in risk. You cannot be willing to be in constant discomfort and being in the decision making not be full of risk. If you want to do something that’s different. It’s easy to put a technical solution if you’re developing a checklist and saying this is what we’re going to do here. So we did that check. Oh, we did that check. Oh, we hired this black woman check. Oh, we hired this gay male check. Now, that’s the extent of the DEI work that your particular organization wants to do. No worries. But if you’re really looking to create systemic change, if you’re really looking to challenge and push and pull people, you have to be willing to say, You know what, this is a risk. It may work it may not But you got to be willing to try it. And you got to be willing to be in this space, how to not is also a praise to the physicality of is always uncomfortable. I’m always in a space how to not. Okay, how do I go about doing this? And how do I sit within that? And and it’s always that, and it doesn’t stop by us early, you’re not going to get to an end game? Because did racism end? I don’t think so. I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I am seeing many, many more walls being built in which to contain it and allowing it to thrive. Yeah.

Heather Shea
Yeah, I think I really appreciate that. That piece because I do think on college and university campuses, the checkboxes and the lists and the, you know, we have to fulfill some compliance mandate, we’re have this required di training, and then people say, Okay, I did my two hours, I’m done, you know, what, till next year, when it’s due again, right, but like this idea that we are all part of a continuous learning, community and learning moment. The other thing that I think, you know, also resonates with me is, you said this, as we were kind of getting ready to hit record around blowing it up, right? Like, are we are we talking about blowing up kind of those conventions, and I, I’ve used this metaphor of the table for a while, right, like, we used to talk about diversity work is like, we just need to bring more voices to the table, more people to the table, you know, so we’re going to add more chairs around this physically limited structure called the table. Okay, so now, instead of a boardroom table, we’re going to make it an equitable table, we’re going to have a round table that we’re going to, you know, make it big enough, so everybody can sit, everybody can see one another. So we’re just going to change the shape of the structure this the table? What if the table didn’t exist? Right? Like, what if we blow up the table? So when you’re talking about kind of the Compliance Center, it’s like, okay, what do we do instead of that, you know, the conversation when I talk about this concept of the table is often well, what are you going to put in place of it? Well, what we’re talking about is a completely different remade system that doesn’t have the same elements. There aren’t chairs sitting around a table, that’s, that’s power, the table is power. So how can we dismantle some of that? So when you were talking about blowing things up, I was like, Oh, I’m gonna unpack that a little bit, a little bit more too.

Marcus Moore
this certain attraction to the the spectacle of blowing something up. Right, that that, in some ways, in a very American way, this embodies some sort of notion of of justice, we have destroyed the thing, we have punished the thing that has punished us. Okay, I mean, if you if you’re into the van Damme Schwarzenegger approach to solving problems, and then that’s one way of doing it. How to not. I’m a student of the world’s greatest academic discipline, anthropology, shouts out to my mentor, Dr. Ginetta Pico, and the way she introduced me to this work. And it helps me understand that in this construct of the table, very often, there’s an emphasis on the material and on the tangible ways in which power is manifest, right? There shows up in or charts and hierarchies and department shares and associated versus assistant professors and all of that fun stuff that that causes HR to exist in and do hard work. Instead of this ever expensive hypothetical table growing with more and more perspectives, I would challenge that we find people who demonstrate the ability to grow. We want to grow people, that tables, this, that that’s a different business. And so, as part of our work, one of my specialties is in culturally relevant teaching. But then as I translate that to administrative spaces, a new a new lens comes on called culturally relevant leadership. Very often there are administrators who operate in meetings, or conferences, in ways that we would never ever want for our young people to experience as a modality of learning. Right? If teacher did unto student as principal does another teacher, oh my gosh, what a horrible way that would be. What if we could show up with a new technique with multimedia and videos and sauce recipes, and all these other things that engage and facilitate learning rather than present learning. So for these people around the table Krischanna, and I have this, this method of facilitating new discoveries, rather than listing answers that we need you to adapt. Facilitation leads to a personal discovery, which operates against this, this dichotomy that we’ve constructed between compliance and creativity, we can force people through the use of power to comply, right, and we can create all sorts of campaigns to get people to comply and punish them or reward them and do all sorts of things. That takes a whole lot of work to do. We could also open up a space of creativity. In the leadership we talk about, there’s a difference between being a leader and becoming a leader. Oftentimes, we have this notion that people in charge are already endowed with the skills and abilities and the qualities and they can just be in it show up with the way that they are, and they they, they shine this this virtue that we should all follow and be mesmerized by. I am startled, like I said, it was 44 years ago that I got this name. And I am still growing up. And watching my mother still grow up, I thought there was this notion that eventually I would get to a particular point, and I can have ice cream for breakfast, and we’re good to go. And that’s it. Right? And it turns out as part of my growing up, I’m discovering no ice cream for breakfast is actually a bad idea. For reasons. What if I leaders could become different, could become more equitable, and even the most equitable equity superhero, that is I continually encounter obstacles and horizons, in my understanding, and in my doing. So I know there’s space for the person 10 miles ahead of me to do the same. If we focus on a method of becoming, rather than being, we don’t have to worry about the construct of tables and chairs and rooms and all those sorts of things. We get to be people. We get to be ourselves. And we get to be the best versions of ourselves. That’s what we’re pushing toward.

Krischanna Roberson
You know, Marcus, I focus on a lot on systemic DEIB strategy. And often the question that, well, I have to remind people all the time systems are made of people. systems don’t operate, right. Those systems are driven by our beliefs, that allow us to have the same behaviors that we have that give us the same results we’ve had for the past some odd years, because no matter where you go within our education system, the data is just the sexy in Brooklyn, as it is in Michigan, it’s the same. And when you talk about this way of becoming off to have to remind people that this work, you have to be willing to sacrifice something. And within that, could it sacrifice could my sacrifice be what I am doing now in order to become right can being able to make a decision that we say I’m going to sacrifice my position in order for a different perspective, and a different way of thinking to show up. And when folks think about becoming and I love how Marcus explained that, because it connects directly to what I talked about in the beginning. Marcus and I on where we started. Our thinking, our approach our ways of being. All of the failing forward that happened as a result of where we are today of understanding the beauty of how to not write it was ways in which we decided to become because we understand that we the people, or the system we’re trying to work up against

Marcus Moore
is long. Go ahead. I was gonna say long before I was using black history by e 40. In the seminars, whichever because one of my most creative creations, the first song and Krischanna is gonna learn something new about me the first time I used a song in a seminar. It was MC Hammer’s, let’s get it started. And people looked at me like, what, what have you brought into this space? And I was like, Well, I tried, I tried something new. I’m gonna choose a different song next time. All right, let’s do some work. There’s room for all of us to grow.

Heather Shea
But I think what really resonates with this idea of becoming for me is that, you know, sometimes people in administrative leadership roles don’t don’t feel like whether it’s in a play from of coming from a place of vulnerability, coming from a place of like, I have to say do be all of the right, right things. That I can’t be in a process of becoming, I have to be, I have to be perfect. Right? And that that’s based on white supremacy, right. But this idea that we are all becoming, you know, and working towards it, and able to admit, when we don’t, when we don’t know, when we may have done something that we need to apologize for, and go back and repair harm. Right. Like, that’s a powerful moment as well. And that’s, that’s the other part that kind of really resonate when you’re talking about becoming I’m like, what license? Do people have to be, you know, particularly a certain level, you’re like, you’ve been given the, you know, you’ve been given the power, can you still become and how do we release some of our administrative leaders from that, like, you have to continually be perfect in these roles and know all the answers. I’m curious as you go to campuses and work with folks or go into organizations, k 12 organizations. You know, I don’t I don’t know, I’m curious about your experience working with those types of leaders, right, like that feel like they have to have all the answers. Like this isn’t for me, this is for the staff, or this is for, you know, like where we’re how do you how do you push against that? And then how do you facilitate that kind of next step that will maybe release some of that pressure?

Krischanna Roberson
I always begin with a five minute chant of practice makes permanent, not perfect. And we say that over and over again for five minutes. No, I’m joking.

Heather Shea
I love that.

Krischanna Roberson
I’m there that’s kind of I do reiterate that. I equate a lot of things to food. And the reiteration that this work is so very different, but not outside of what you’re already doing. Right? That when we think about a deliciously made pulled pork barbecue sandwich with cole slaw on a buttered bun, one of my favorite things to eat, you take a bite, it’s everywhere, it’s up your nose, it’s in your hair, it’s everywhere, but you keep eating it. Because it’s so good. That’s what this work is. The toils that it takes for you to make that meat, which you start out being very tough, to become soft and succulent, to add in the various levels of sauce that you need to make it your own. And then you put it together, it’s all gone, you start over and consistently re innovating, especially to leaders, the messiness of this work and that it’s okay to be rest messy, that it requires pieces of yourself that you’ve had not access before. It requires levels of authenticity and vulnerability that you’ve never even thought of displaying. Has to be a big part of it. And the approach is very different. Particularly when I go on to K through 12. They expect well, you’re going to have your agenda and here’s where we will no, don’t do none of that we might start off with big lotto big energy. That’s might be the feeling that we’re walking to today. But

Heather Shea
they’re listening markets is like

Krischanna Roberson
a very version that’s

Marcus Moore
totally different. Totally.

Krischanna Roberson
Um, so by establishing that, even when you come into the space, what it feels like walking in is very different than what you’re used to. allows for them to come on. It’s a little bit different.

Marcus Moore
The MC Hammer didn’t threaten my contract. I know that a lot of and that might be the last time you show work. So there you go. I think in this space of, of how do we get how to get free to move from a space of being to becoming we think of the processes of socialization that have served our species, the best for the longest, right? One of the particular challenges in higher ed is once people have a whole alphabet, behind their name, they think they know everything they have, they have, all the dudes have been paid. And now it’s time to show up and be, be the way you’ve been trained to be. And then life throws something new at you, like a pandemic, or a pandemic, or a pandemic. And in those ways, we’re finding our how we have to discover new ways of being one of the traps we run into, in higher ed and everywhere else is in thinking that we have to solve this problem by ourselves. And so we can give away one of the one of the nuggets that we found so valuable in our, in our work on how to not, we pointed to the patron saint Audrey Lord, who many people know said the Masters tools cannot destruct the Masters House will not distort the masters. As he’s talking very specifically about the ways in which the techniques to ideologies or strategies that you learned in systems of sustainability cannot be used for the purposes of disruption. A lot of people are tuned into, into that quote, and use it very often in our space. less popular, are the lines that surround that particular quote, or Audrey Lorde says, when we use community, we are able to find new ways of being. And community is the instrument of our survival. And so we have here we have a bunch of administrators, a bunch of leaders and department heads, and even professors who look at their courses and their syllabi as their own fiefdom to do unto as they please. It is a place that is allergic to community. And it’s the place that needs community. So how can we find a place of belonging, of grace, of of acceptance of a growth of becoming by ourselves, none of us have been able to be socialized by ourselves, we all need to community in some form or fashion, to become who and how we are. And that has led to our transformation, that same philosophy that pre collegiate wisdom shows up in how we do our work, who in our community knows something about equity? Who in our community knows something about marginalized experience? Who in our community knows something about freedom? And how can we partner with these people, not exploit them and use them for these two hours that we have them on campus to check the box? But how can we be in community with them in a way that is reciprocal in a way that is productive in a way that is generative and moves toward justice? I think those are the types of things that that lead to our personal and institutional well being.

Heather Shea
Just yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, I think about the context in which we’re, we’re doing this work right since and Corp in June, you know, we we have now state environments that are, you know, making doing anything called dei work next to impossible. The attacks on this actually as a as a functional area in Student Affairs in Higher Education is real. And, and, you know, there are colleagues of mine who are still in those states, you know, who, you know, they can’t you know, that you can’t just say, Oh, well, you got to move to a state where, you know, your work is valued, you can’t write like students will still need to be served. I’d love to hear, you know, kind of your thoughts on this kind of increasingly perilous role that folks play. And, you know, what kinds of messages of hope do you do try to instill if you’re invited in and and are able to share space with folks in those in those contexts?

Marcus Moore
Oh, I’ve got juicy thoughts. I got juicy thoughts. Today is Wednesday, August 14, and we are residents of the state of Georgia, where Rudy Giuliani has been indicted on Rico laws. Just I noticed the headline that a lot of people have caught on to already. But I’m I’m allowed the next five seconds just to savor the irony of Rudy Giuliani getting indicted on Rico, I’ll count to five. It makes me think of the ways that, folks gotta be careful what they ask for, right? Because here in Georgia, we got mandatory minimum sentences, you gotta be careful what you ask for, we are creating these systems that are ultimately that can ultimately lead to the detriment of everybody. These anti dei laws are all well and good, as long as they mute conversations about this group, that group in that group. But when it comes back on us group, somebody’s gonna be real sorry that they did that. We can recognize in many ways, how are these sorts of systems of limitation of expression of, of being are harmful, personally, professionally, and dare I say, socially and nationally, all of that exists in an imaginary future that we can imagine. In the immediate term, we have the situation just like you name where professionals who have been doing good work for a long time, are now struggling to hold on to their livelihoods. And even greater than that the work in this particular vein of justice is being cut off. All of this is traumatizing. And none of it is surprising to students of history. We know that for every movement toward justice, there’s been a counter movement away. And so Surprise, surprise, it just happened again, and will happen again. But we also know the same way that people have been able to come up with new ways of expression, new ways of survival, new ways of being new ways of thriving in the face of foolishness. And we’ve been doing that for the last 400 years. We will do it again. And we’ll do it in community if we subscribe to the patterns of what we are allowed to do, right, so So consider this in this conversation, we are both saying people in dei are suffering in their dei positions, and then also grieving for the loss of dei positions. How do those two positions make sense side by side? One at a time? Yes. But together like I hate this dei work. Oh, God, why are we losing this dei work? Yeah, yeah. So something better of something better available to us. And something better available that young people have shown us that we can move around legendary institutions to achieve what we want to with much more ease than we could before. There are plenty of avenues toward justice and dei and the ways that we have known it has been one. There are others, I’m not going to find them. We’re going to make them and we’re going to propel them. And then watch what happens when all these systems come after campus organizations like I don’t know, the young Republicans for their lack of diversity in the particular ways that they are showing up in mono racial ways. Then what will say

Krischanna Roberson
you know, Angela said, All truth passes through three stages versus ridiculed. Second, it’s violently oppose. And then third, it’s accepted as being self evident, right? It’s the cycle that continues to happen. And we look at that, if we look at it through a timeline across generations, right? When we look at the civil rights movement, when we look at the Black Lives movement, when we look at marriage equality, who was in office, why the ebbs and flows in which things happen? We’ve been bitching and complaining about all of this for a long time. And there are moments in which great things happen. Terrible things happen. Great things happen. Terrible things happen. And it’s all a result of the decisions that are made. Early on, right, that now oh, wait a minute. I love what Mark is just saying. Yeah, until the Republican gathering group on campus is impacted negatively, by all of these things, then we’ll see a change and to which that all goes back. The climate, our politics, our communities are all the same. The only thing that makes it more heavy. It’s technology because now we see it so much more now, which makes understanding how to not even more important because rest is a requirement of this work. And if you are constantly absorbing all of this, even the joys of Giuliani and the riverboat brawl, even though it’s iterations of everything that pop up, it’s still a lot. Right? There are all these different things that happen. We’re we’re now seeing this beautiful eruption, particularly with a riverboat brawl, you see this beautiful eruption of people who are like, yes, we have created a counter narrative against the belief that we don’t come together that we’re not in things together, were particularly in a black community. And yes, we are. This is this is y’all just seeing it from this lens right

Heather Shea
now.

Krischanna Roberson
To which now we see white cops with white chairs attached to their belt, and what does that mean to us? As a response, so it’s constant, it is constant, and it’s not going anywhere. And to believe that one iteration of something is going to fix it will push us to not want to do the work anymore. And we just can’t do that. We got to keep on keeping on. I couldn’t think of a rap verse but our markets Well, while you’re

Heather Shea
Yeah, there’s there’s definitely one there. I think, I think that’s a good place, actually, for us to move to final thoughts, because I love I love how this conversation evolved. You know, in our prep week, we’re like, we’ve just go in a completely different direction. And I think we hit all the things. But if there’s something that I missed that you really were hoping to indicate, I’d love for you to share that. As we always kind of ended the podcast. This is called Student Affairs NOW. So we’d love to hear what you’re pondering, thinking traveling. And if you would also be willing to share how people can connect with you connect with your work, connect with your consultant work. And with the broader concept of how to not love to hear that as well. Who’d like to start with the final thoughts, I’ll open it up because I didn’t put assignments in. Krischanna you want to go first.

Krischanna Roberson
So I don’t know if it’s so much as a final thought, because like I said, this work is is all encompassing, but it is important to know that one for your listeners who are doing this work, you are not alone. There are many co conspirators that exist in around under behind in front of where you are, it is the idea that if you can minimize your ego to know that you don’t have to do it alone, the doors gonna always swing open. It’s always somebody willing to do this work. And for folks to stay in it. But more importantly, like Marcus and I want to help you do that. You are a rare breed of a no limit equity soldier, for anybody who decides to take this work on. And because of that, we got to move to a different beat in a different grade. And we invite you to join us as we show you how to not I am not a big social media person, even though my 26 year old daughter tells me I should be. But you can find collaborate consulting on the web and very sporadic ways in which we post on Instagram. Marcus is going to kind of share all the details of how we are gladly collaborating to bring amazing things to folks to build community and to again build our coalition and our no limit no limit equity soldiers as we co conspire toward racial equity.

Heather Shea
Well, we’ll add a link to your website and anything that you’d like me to put in the show notes for our listeners today. So we’ll help people find you. That’s for sure. Marcus, what about you final, final thoughts? And

Marcus Moore
so I’m wondering as the places that are titled DEI and the titles that the title DEI come under particular scrutiny. We recognize that equity is everybody’s job if you’re a dean If you’re president, if you’re a board member, if you’re a department chair, if you’re a professor, whatever role you have on the campus, equity isn’t simply the job of those people in that office, right. And typically, those are three people in the office for a 10,000 member campus, there’s no way that we’re going to be able to accomplish that, unless we all show up in new ways of becoming and being. To that end, we designed the house in that session that you saw the as part one of a five part series. And we’re offering all five online, and the links that are provided here on Neil palmaris.com. And as well as this podcast, you’ll be able to find out how to subscribe for those be a part of that community. The Masters tools aren’t going to do it. community will, we have a particular perspective, and we’re opening spaces for anybody who wants to know more or contribute more to that conversation, to come and join us for these conversations. We promise it’ll be worthwhile. It’ll be entertaining, show you a different way of engaging the people around you. That we’re going to model a brand of freedom that we want to see on campus so that we can see ourselves in this work. We can see yourselves and this work, too. So we hope that you click that link. We invite members across the campus to show up students as well. If Krischanna If I knew then what I knew now. Oh, my goodness. Well, some of y’all Hey,, y’all are at the no then point in your lives. Don’t you want us to?

Heather Shea
Yeah. Yeah, I that is the that is the key. If I had to add a final thought it would be students inspire me and they are bringing that energy and engagement. And I agree with you like, including them in the conversation. We have a coalition group on our campus that I think is really at, you know, like at the edge of creating and envisioning and, you know, from a futuristic perspective, so, we’ll build we’ll build that in as well as to get engaged students in this. I am so grateful for both of your time today. Thank you for your contribution. Thank you for this session at Ncore. Firstly, and then for joining me on the podcast. Also want to send our heartfelt appreciation to our dedicated producer Nat Ambrosey Thank you for making us look and sound great. Thanks also to the sponsor of today’s podcast Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution. Symplicity supports all aspects of student life but including not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and wellbeing, students success and accessibility services. So to learn more, you can go to symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Please take a moment to visit our website and click on that sponsors link to learn more. And while you’re there, if you’re listening today and not already receiving our weekly newsletter, we send that out every Wednesday when we drop a new episode. You can do that right there on the studentaffairsnow.com website. And as as we end every episode, I hope everybody has a fabulous week. It is August in higher ed. Thanks to our listeners. Thanks to both of you and make it a great week everyone.

Websites: 

https://www.eventcreate.com/e/how-to-not

https://www.collabovateconsulting.com/