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Consistent with our Mission and Branches of the Pine, the following Statement of Belonging is the joint work of the staffulty JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Group and the student SAFE (Student Alliance for Equity) Club, in collaboration with our Head of School.
This Statement has been presented to all ULS staffulty and a wide variety of stakeholders including students, parents, and alums for critique and collaboration, whose many hands have honed, expanded, and improved its words and scope. This Statement has the unanimous endorsement of the Leadership Team, Head of School, and Board of Trustees.
We have boiled down our Statement of Belonging to seven core observations.
This is a living document and doesn’t aim to capture every feeling on the matter. This document is not legally binding or contractual. This document differs from most corporate statements of inclusion because our mission is education; it differs from most educational statements of inclusion because we are not an ordinary school.
We hope it will be received in the spirit of intellectual curiosity and moral reasoning, prompted by the twin questions: 1) Who are we? and 2) How can we do right by all our members? We offer this document in commitment to cultivating personal integrity, pursuing great character through service to others, and educating the whole student.
Why do we wish to have an official Statement of Belonging endorsed at all levels of School governance?
- To testify publicly to shared values around the topic of belonging in line with our Mission and Branches of the Pine.
- To describe the spirit of our social and personal commitments to one another within the School and the School’s institutional commitments to each of us.
- To capture an aspirational ethos for our growing community – something to point to when we want to discern norms and guide policies.
- To articulate a clear stance for the benefit of new and potential community members who wish to know how we approach questions of diversity and inclusion.
- To seek alignment with best practices of our accrediting bodies and peers at ISACS and NAIS as we embrace the work of learning in community.
- To anticipate the need for careful institutional responsiveness to questions of gender and race which, if left under-considered, can lead to division, alienation, or confusion.
- To affirm our duty to elicit all voices and enforce appropriate protections of each other, acknowledging that even the best communities can fail their own members.
- To generate thought and conversation about the character of our School and the things that matter to our members.
- To make clear that we respect differences at ULS and that their history and value will neither be ignored nor taken for granted, but sought out and appreciated.