206: 30 Ways to Center Equity And Justice Today

Ethan Sawyer  0:08  
Hi friends. This is Ethan Sawyer, aka College Essay Guy. My goal is to bring more ease, joy and purpose into the college application process. And welcome to the podcast, where it's my job to interview some of the most brilliant minds in the college admissions field, analyze their genius, break it down for you into a series of practical, actionable steps that you can take, whether you're applying to college or helping someone else apply. But sometimes I don't even have to break it down for you into practical, actionable steps, because my guest, whom you'll meet shortly, has already done it. My guest is Marie Bigham. She is the co founder of the admissions community cultivating equity and peace today, except, for short, an online space with 5000 members. At this point, it's 5000 members. It's mobilizing college admissions professionals on behalf of marginalized groups in a variety of ways, and you'll hear more about her in just a bit, but basically, on this podcast, we'll be sharing things like, you know why you shouldn't, for example, maybe even use the word ally. How do you stand up for others, even when or especially when it's most uncomfortable? Where to find a treasure trove of resources on racial equity and 10 specific ways that counselors and colleges can help build a more inclusive environment on their campuses. The 30 tips that Maria is going to share, some of them are going to be specific to counselors. Some of them are going to be specific to colleges. And then the ones at the end are specific for everyone. These are practical things you can do right away. Here we go, Hi friends and welcome. My guest today is Marie Bigham. Marie is the founder of accept. That's the admissions community cultivating equity and peace today, a social media based action group for the admission profession, which recently received the Excellence in Education Award from NACAC. For y'all who don't know, that's the National Association of College Admissions Counselor counseling, whoops, and was honored by Facebook at the 2017 Facebook Community Summit. Marie has over 20 years of experience in the profession. She served on the board of directors for NACAC, Vice Chair of the Board of association of college counselors in independent schools, which is access. On the board of directors of Texas Association of basically TAC act, and also in her not so spare time is works as a counselor at visitor Newman school in New Orleans. So welcome.


Marie Bigham  2:29  
Hey, thanks for having me.


Ethan Sawyer  2:31  
So what are you up to in Los Angeles?


Marie Bigham  2:32  
What are you here for? I did that flag, and just to record this, although that would have been fun, I'm here because I just finished attending the SERP conference, and stands for the Center for enrollment, research, policy and practice, which is hosted at USC. It is a think tank and Research Center for admissions, and this year's theme was race and identity in the admissions process. So I was one of the speakers, which is a huge honor, but really, for me, it was such a cool, brand new experience, because this, this is a group of folks who talk about our space of college admissions, and this topic, specifically through through lens of research and data and historical context, since a very academic type experience, which is very different for me, learning hashtag, learning, so much learning, and feeling at times a little intimidated, and feeling at times like, No, I I'm doing the right thing. But what


Ethan Sawyer  3:29  
are you noticing as you're there with this community? Oh my


Marie Bigham  3:31  
gosh, this community. You know, we had a bunch of really talented academic researchers talking about this work, and what I found incredibly impressive is that they're all They're all pretty young, they're all very, very, very smart and very creative in how they're approaching these issues of race and identity and equity in college admissions. And what I love so much. I don't know if this is specific to the topic, or if SERP and Jerry lucido just did a great job. And thinking about it this way, it was mostly people of color, and Leslie and younger people of color who are presenting their research. And so it was really clear that for them, this topic wasn't just an intellectual exercise, but rather something that was deeply important to them and something that was personal and real. So it was so cool. My brain like broke in half a gazillion times. It was really cool.


Ethan Sawyer  4:18  
One of the things you mentioned just briefly. Viewer, Jamie, is like seeing the numbers, like seeing, Oh my gosh,


Marie Bigham  4:24  
seeing the data, and really drilling in. Because I think we know, we know the stories. We know that amic data right? We've got the stories. But these folks were able to show with qualitative analysis, through research, through surveys, that you know, things like, Hey, if you have more students of color at a community, there might actually be fewer incidents of bias happening on the campus, things like that. It was just really cool. It was, it was cool to stretch my brain in different ways. And I'm, I'm just always trying to learn more, because for as much. I think I know about admissions and about these issues. I don't know everything. And it's it was great. It was great to meet new people. It's great to engage in different conversations. Lovely, and the weather is beautiful out here. It is.


Ethan Sawyer  5:11  
It is. We don't have the cold wave,


Marie Bigham  5:14  
the vortex, all right. So


Ethan Sawyer  5:16  
to set context, we're going to do 30 tips or resources in 30 ish minutes. The title for this is 30 ways to center equity and justice today. Marie, take


Marie Bigham  5:25  
us on. All right, we're going to do this. We're going to do this fast, but all the resources are going to be available, and you're going to be able to dig into this yourself. So we're going to do this quick. Number one, first hint, I'm going to ask all of us to consider not using the word ally. I think that's something that everyone does, and they say proudly, I'm an ally. I I stand by my friends. You. You get the t shirt or the coffee mug. I am an ally. You get the safe spaces sticker on your door. And I'm suggesting we don't use that word, because instead, I just want you to do the work. Just do the work. Why? What's


Ethan Sawyer  5:56  
problematic about that, about using about, yeah, it's a


Marie Bigham  5:59  
great question. I think, I think what happens with with a lot of people, and this is, this is somewhat of a criticism, so we get so attached to the title of, I want to be a good ally, that we forget to do the work that follows that just because you say that doesn't mean you're actually putting yourself out there and and taking a stance and sharing your privilege and your voice, or, you know, making or engaging in difficult conversations and making hard decisions. And so rather than embrace the title, rather than putting on the Cape, I would ask you just to do the work. And if someone tells you you're a good ally, then wear that as a badge of pride. Number one. Number two, this is a philosophical thing, but I hope that we all really learn the difference between diversity and equity. And that's, I think, a first step in being good at this work. To me, diversity is about counting people and checking boxes and in numbers, whereas equity that's much harder. But equity is about changing the culture. Equity is about diving in and again, doing that work instead of just counting bodies.


Ethan Sawyer  6:58  
Do you remember that dance and party analogy. Yeah, So diversity is diversity.


Marie Bigham  7:05  
Diversity is being invited to the party, right? Equity is being asked to dance to me, justice, which is really my ultimate goal, is being the DJ is throwing the party. Wow, I want to be the DJ. Thank


you. Thank you. Thank


you. Thank you. All right. Number three, want to make sure that everyone here is registered to vote, and what a tricky and interesting topic in this country right now, because, in theory, we think of our voices, and it matters one one vote for one person. And there's too much evidence out there right now that maybe that's not true. However, it's still a right that every one of us in the United States really needs to exercise if we're able to, because too many outstanding people aren't able to, we need to stand up and be counted and make our voices heard and show up with polls, not just big national years, every year, every cycle, every time there's something to vote for your school board. That's where the decisions happen, those local elections, those are critically important. It's not just the Presidential cycles. It's every single time you can share your voice, you need to vote. Okay, that's number four. This is a biggie, and this requires a little bit more work from all of us, but I think it's critical. Remember, I said, don't use the word ally and don't put that cape on. Number four is a little different, and that's become a really good, effective, supportive bystander. Do some bystander training. So here's an example, the terrible, terrible story of the actor Jesse Smollett last night, two nights ago, getting beaten within an inch of his life while people were screaming racial epithets at him and homophobic things and pouring bleach on his skin. What is bystander training that's stepping in now, that's a really dangerous experience, right? But if, let's say, there you are, you know you're on the subway and someone's just harassing the person standing next to you, bystander training is, how do you deflect? How do you step into that while keeping yourself safe and the person who's being victimized safe? But how do you step into that to to disrupt the moment, to make it safer? Bystander training, there's so much good information, and the document we're sharing will have, I think some of the best information about that. These next couple are about resources that I think everyone should share, everyone should read and everyone should dig into daily if you can Hechinger Report. So this is a not for profit organization that produces a newsletter, but also produces original research that focuses on inequity and injustices in the K through 20 education system in the United States, they have data, they have stories, they have just such a wide range of information, and it is incredibly eye opening, and it's meant for the public to read. So it's not like a wonky educator type thing, but it's so helpful, and some of the best writing about this that you'll receive. Number six. Teen Vogue. If you are not reading Teen Vogue every day, then you don't know really what's going on out there in the different movements for equity. Teen Vogue right now is the voice of the resistance, just the same way that park rangers are saving us. So is Teen Vogue. It's some of the best, most timely, most up to the minute, and sophisticated discussion and reporting about inequities all over the world from a lot of lenses, more focusing the United States. That's number seven. Everyone needs to subscribe to The New York Times race related newsletter. It's a weekly newsletter that aggregates the New York Times coverage about about race and identity from the week, but not only does it share the article specifically, but also gives a very thought provoking commentary and analysis and gives the context for how this moment, this incident, whatever they're covering, came about number eight. And this is the last newsletter I'm going to tell you to subscribe to, because I know our email inboxes are ugly. That's blavity.com B, L, A, V, i, t, y.com, blavity gives some of the best insight into what the thoughts and experiences of black millennials. It's funny, it's smart, it's satirical, it's insightful, if I might give a plug. It is written by an alumna of my alma mater, Washington. You and it's just, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll want to see it again and


Ethan Sawyer  11:24  
again. I'm going to set up the next one. Okay, take a sip of water. Thank you. So one of the questions that I have is, like as a as someone who will sometimes be on social media and Facebook and stuff, what do I do? How do I sort of negotiate that, when I sense that someone is like something you know happening, or, you know, this is, like, sort of, I guess, connected to bystander training. But like, what? Give me some Facebook advice. Oh


Marie Bigham  11:46  
my gosh, Facebook advice, isn't I tricky with I think my best Facebook is always to sink into the hard conversations and get ready for him. But that leads to number nine, and this is somewhat specific to social media, because it's so easy to happen here, I'm going to ask all of you to not decenter what is actually happening to marginalized people in a moment, for the sake of an intellectual exercise these terrible, terrible documentary stories about R Kelly right, six hours of just horrible things, what you don't want to do. And what I mean by the decentering is the folks who would go online and say, but it's terrible that our Kelly was abusive to those women. But why aren't we blaming the parents of those women, and why aren't we talking about all of the people who get abused by people, or my very, very least favorite phrase in the world, just to play devil's advocate, because y'all the devil don't need no advocate. When we say, Don't decenter, what's actually happening to marginalized people for the sake of an intellectual conversation is that what might be a very fun intellectual thought game exercise for you is incredibly painful for the people from those communities to watch unfold online. Number 10 lobby your state legislature, and you need to lobby for two things, really specifically, a reasonable school, reasonable school counselor to student ratio, which I think happened here in the LA, in the LA teacher strike, right a little bit, and B that we all need more funding for the state's public Two and four year colleges. Our resource list will have ways that you can reach out and that lobbying might be like literally showing up at a lawmakers door at the Capitol. It could be sending a letter, it could be sending an email or making a phone call. But when you reach out to your elected officials and you are a constituent, they care and they pay attention when I if I were to call someone here in Los Angeles, an elected official here from, you know, and I'm from Louisiana, it doesn't matter as much, but we can all take those seconds to sign up for legislative alerts, to send that message. Those things have impact. We know that from from so much legislation, we're going to give you a list in the resources of the racial equity Institute bibliography. It is an enormous list of reading about history, about context, about cutting edge things, but just about why these issues matter. And if you were looking for a way to really think about this deeply, dig into that bibliography. Pick out a couple of pieces that you're going to read and dive


Ethan Sawyer  14:20  
in the two that I'm reading right now, white fragility and why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the cafeteria? The updated one, I think so,


Marie Bigham  14:27  
yeah, but you think so far, I know right? Yeah, it's


Ethan Sawyer  14:31  
actually Shifting Paradigms, and it's having me, yeah, like, actually look at the world in a different way. Yeah?


Marie Bigham  14:36  
12, if you are, for whatever reason, planning a panel or a discussion group. You know our examples that we came up with, if you're doing a professional conference, if you're running a community meeting or something like that, if you have a gathering of people who are experts talking about a topic, make sure that at least half of those participants are women and or people of color. I think Frances. McDormand called it the equity clause or the inclusion clause, when she won the Oscar as a woman of color. Now I'm insisting that whenever someone invites me to speak about a professional event or to give my thoughts if I'm going to be with other people, I want to know that I'm not going to be the only because that means I'm carrying a much heavier burden than the other speakers, and I went parody. So that's the demand that I'm making for someone to have the privilege of my time and expertise sharing that stage as sharing privilege number 13, stand up for others, even when, or perhaps especially when, it's uncomfortable by that, I mean, you're having that fabled Thanksgiving dinner and everyone picks on their uncles. We're gonna call it the aunties. You're there at Thanksgiving dinner and your auntie makes some really nasty, ill, informed, incorrect bias statement. Everyone's kind of looks at each other, and you just hope that the auntie shuts up. No, no, that's your time where you need to take that stand, because what we know is that people listen to their closest peers. They listen to the people with whom they identify the most, with whom they can see their own humanity reflected. And those moments where it might be most difficult to engage in those conversations are the ones where you're gonna have the most long, lasting impact. And we've given you a couple of resources about how to do that gracefully, effectively and meaningfully. If you have someone in your family, or someone who is there, who believes as you do, who feels that discomfort when that person makes that biased comment, but they feel the fear of standing up, you're modeling that to them, that it's okay to do that if you are in a space where identities are hidden, they're not obvious for perhaps like gender or race can be, you don't know the identities of the other people there, and so you taking that stand at that moment when it's difficult. You might be standing up for that person who is there, and you're just not aware of it. And that's a remarkably powerful moment to feel seen and heard and to stamp to be that someone stood up for you. So there's lots of reasons to do it. God.


Ethan Sawyer  17:04  
And it takes courage, right? It takes courage to go, I'm going to be vulnerable, because there's, there's a way that an outing has happened, and it's sort of like naming the thing that is present and one, one resource that I really love from this, if you're worried about, sort of like making people wrong, there's that and that might happen, but my go to is, like, non violent communication, like speaking to here's the impact that that phrase is having on me, and this is the way that this is making me feel, and using, like, simple, reflective language. So if you haven't, if you don't know about non violent communication, I totally recommend it. There's an amazing book, 32 tips, Marshall Rosenberg's non violent communication for helping folks understand what is the impact of them on your system. So


Marie Bigham  17:44  
number 14, this is something that I think every one of us can do, and it is something that just requires paying attention when something really crappy happens with the world. Reach out to your friends and families and colleagues who are members of that community that might have been harmed. So again, using the Jesse Smollett as an example, I made really intentional efforts to reach out to my friends who I know identify as queer, to reach out to my especially queer friends of color and family members, to say, Wow, I don't know what it's like to to read a story like this, and to see it over and over again, and to see the language that's being used, I can't, I can't personally fathom what it's like to receive that. But I'm here, and if you want to talk, and I want to, I want to be there for you and just sending you a lot of love and a lot of support, and not asking anything from them, and not saying, How can I do this, or what must be like, just saying, This really sucks. And I know that you are feeling this more intensely and differently than I am just acknowledging that in the world. Because I think so many times, many of us feel like, when something bad happens in the world, you go to work or you go out to dinner or whatever, wherever you interact, that nobody else around you is feeling it. Now you are feeling and carrying this burden of limitation or pain. You're looking around like is no one else feeling this. And then and that that doubles it. Yeah,


Ethan Sawyer  19:04  
we're doing pretty good. We're moving along.


Marie Bigham  19:09  
Okay, I'm done with that. All right. So now we're going to shift to some things, like, if you are in a secondary school, if you are in the space where you work with students, kind of where they are, and that might be independent counseling that might be doing essay work that might be at a school. These are some things that are kind of specific to you and your place, that you can do to center equity and justice. This is if you work at a high school, and especially in a college counseling office, anytime a college requests to meet with you, to come to your school to set up a visit, my challenge to you is that you turn around and you offer them a list of other schools in your area that they might not know of, and you should include in that list contact information make sure they're okay with this, but other schools and programs that a college rep should visit that might not be on their radar. There's a great article attached that shows the. Admissions offices tend to sit, tend to visit the same places over and over again. And I'm just as guilty of this when I worked in admissions and then turn around and say, Gosh, I don't know why I haven't seen those kids. Well, if y'all keep going back to the same place where you're not finding those kids, you're not going to find them. I keep going back to the same place. So as high school counselors, I think that one of the things that we can do to help our college colleagues with that is to point them to other places that they should be seeing and meet kids not like yours. And


Ethan Sawyer  20:23  
that seems like it takes a Google and an email like, pretty much you don't already know who those like, which those schools are. It's like, what are the schools in my area that aren't potentially getting these visits? Yeah, and then, and


Marie Bigham  20:34  
then, if you don't know who those folks are, if you don't know the schools are, then incumbent upon you to reach out and make those relationships and do better about learning about your community. Number 16, and this is one that this, this is a lot of work, but I'm going to put this out there. If you are a school person, you need to make sure that all of the students in your institution have equal access to honors, AP, IB, programs, whatever, those accelerated classes are available at your school. Pay attention to who populates those classes, and once you figure that out, you need to start asking questions as to why. Rarely are these things either nefarious or specific or no one's sitting in a scheduling office saying, I don't think that black kids should be have access to AP Physics. I really, really don't think that's happening out there, but what might be happening is that as institutions set up pathways or rules, or just how you get into those opportunities, there might be barriers that they're just not aware of. And there's a great article attached here. This talks about how that happens, but why this is really important in terms of preparation, and it's just good for you to know your institution that way. Number 17, as a school counselor, it is important that we know about all of the opportunities in our region. I know because I work at a private school. I'll be honest, I would know a lot about the selective places that are in my region. I know, or have known very little about two year schools, about tribal colleges, about HBCUs, about other minority serving institutions, about trade schools, about all of those other post secondary paths that are just as valid and important and education providing as a selective school. So one of the things that I did this this academic year. One of the things I'm doing is I'm trying to visit every community college that is in my region and learning about the programs that they offer, learning about the pathways to it, learning about the transfer process if someone wants to, learning about the special programs that they should be involved with. That's been my goal, and that's been incredibly eye opening, really, really, really eye opening, and this makes me a better professional. I think we can all do a little bit better with that number 18. We need to make sure, as school officials, that any meeting that is intended for the caregiver of a student that's accessible to all. And by the way, I'm trying really, really hard to not use the word parent. I'm trying really hard to do that specifically, because we know that the folks who care for students might not always be their parent, and that families come in a gazillion different forms. And so I'm just I'm trying really hard to do that, to change my language, to be more inclusive of the reality of life. What do I mean by that, though, in terms of being accessible, what time of day are you offering meetings and information? If you're doing things at 10 in the morning, you're making assumptions, making assumptions that the parent doesn't work or someone could leave work. Make sure that there are translators, including ASL translation. I'm trying to one of the things we're talking about my school is providing child care for any of our meetings with just the acknowledgement that sometimes families can't sneak away for a meeting regardless of the time because of child care issues, and it's really expensive, so we're trying to do that a little bit better. Is public transportation easily available in some locations, there's not a lot, but some locations, perhaps public transportation is cut off at a certain time, or the location where you're doing something isn't friendly. We just need to try, I think, to move any barrier for an adult who's involved in this process, number 19, and this might be a little more specific to folks who are in independent schools or who do independent counseling or work with families of mean, in general, we all got to stop assuming that very few families want information about aid and paying for college, and we need to assume that everyone is trying to figure out a way to pay for college. We don't want to further marginalize people by hosting a separate financial aid program, but that's over there. Not everyone needs that. No, just the truth and realities that everybody needs this information, we just need to assume in every single bit of communication that every family is going to need help paying. For it, and doing that, I think, marginalizes, and, you know, does not marginalize, and also destigmatize, is that that everyone needs help paying for college.


Ethan Sawyer  25:06  
One way that I do that is by having that in under the umbrella of the college list conversation. So when you're having that, when you're titling even, hey, here's what we're talking about tonight. It's like, let's talk about college list development, how to develop a great college list. And then one of the bullet points underneath that is that, like weaving in the conversation about how to pay for college, yep,


Marie Bigham  25:24  
anyway, it just, I think it's fair. We ready to transition this next one. Y'all, we're moving fast. Okay, so this next group, this is going to assume that you work at a college that might be a two year, four year, private, public, trade, whatever, but that you are the person who's reaching out to students and recruiting. So that's the group we're talking about there. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give big props and number 20 to Tulane University for this one. I'm really excited about this. So let me start by saying this is inspired by Tulane and by Jeff schiffman's hard work. If you're visiting a city, let's say that you are being flown to LA to speak at a school, and it's, you know, a great Independent School, and they're, you know, they're covering all these expenses for you to come out there to share information for their students. Take that opportunity to host another program elsewhere, away from that school, to share that same information with students who attend schools that won't have access to someone like you, and host those evening programs or weekend programs at a library, at a community center. Don't do it at private schools like mine. Don't do it expensive hotels. Save yourself some money. And also, again, make sure that there's public transportation available to you. We need to, we need to broaden that, that recruitment pipeline for so many reasons, but this is also an issue of equity. Number 21 whenever you're visiting a school, ask about the culture of the school. We're saying a lot. And I think in our in the media, we hold colleges really accountable for incidents on their campuses, but we don't do a good enough job at holding secondary schools equally accountable. Those communities tend to be smaller, and they tend to, you know, things that happen don't make the news as much. So if you're a college rep and you're visiting a high school, ask kids questions, find out about the racial climate at the schools that you're visiting, like,


Ethan Sawyer  27:20  
what kind of


Marie Bigham  27:22  
questions you know ask about, like, who's in school leadership? Where do kids hang out? If you don't see a single kid of color during your visit, find out, why not talk to the kids, but ask them, What is it like to to be in your school community? Is it welcoming? Is it warm, if you're a marginalized student, are you? How's the school addressing that? I think that's important for us as we know our institutions. You know, in admissions, we talk about relationships and we talk about context, right? And so as we learn about schools, we want to the context of how percentage that go to college, what classes are offered, things like that. I think a part of that toolkit, information that we're gathering needs to include, what is the school climate like? What are you supporting by going there? Number 22 this is truly one of my favorite things, and this is something that really anyone can do, but I think it's really, really impactful in college admissions office, and that's to do an assessment of the images in your work space. And that could be your specific office, that could be your suite, that could be the hallways, but do an image assessment. If you are a white person, take a person of color with you, and vice versa. I use my phone and I time it, and when you're with that person, walk down a hallway or wherever you're looking, and time how long it takes to find a face like yours, if you and I were walking in the hallway in a high school, how long would it take to find your face as a white man versus mine as an Asian woman? I did this one time with a colleague at a school that I was visiting recently, and it took him 10 to 15 seconds upon any space we entered, it took me 48 minutes.


Ethan Sawyer  29:05  
I mean, that's not surprising. It's not surprising, not surprising. And


Marie Bigham  29:09  
at the same time that's reflective. I'm gonna brag about myself for something really quick. A lot of the students of color in my school hang out in my office, and I've tried very hard to create, to create a space and culture where that's encouraged, and it's just a really cool thing. But I remember my first year, one of my students saying to me, I like to hang out in your office, because it's the only room on campus where I see non white faces. And that wasn't intentional by any means. And I looked around, I'm like, well, it's family pictures, it's my wedding picture, it's concert posters, but that was the first thing that she saw. She felt reflected, and so she felt safe in that room. Do the same in your own spaces. Number 23 if your college requires an application fee, is it easy to get a fee waiver? What are some of those other fees that are barriers for applicants before they even get to you? Because we know that those financial barriers while we. As adults, or we have people with financial privilege might see those as small. It's only $100 it's only $50 these things add up really, really fast, and the aggregate are incredibly expensive. And so if you have those fees as a possible like, how easy is it to get a waiver? How easy is it for that to not be a barrier? I think colleges hate it when I say that, because, like that revenue is important, it is, but come on, you know what else is important? Justice opening doors. Okay, there were 24 we're getting so close. Yeah, I am so proud of this movement, and excited about this movement for colleges to start taking test scores directly off of a student's application, rather than going through a CT or SAT and making that a way for students to save money and to remove those barriers. If you work in admissions and you are not the boss, you need to ask your leadership, is that something that's coming up? And we have a resource of colleges that are taking self reported test scores now, and it's a really great list, and those schools have great data about how this is an effective way of completing files and having more applicants, but removing a barrier, and it's something I I would love to see happen everywhere. Last one for colleges, if you have a tour guide program, if you have an ambassador program, if you have a host program, are those groups of students reflective of your campus community? At many schools, they are not take a look and talk about why. What are those barriers? Talk with them. And so at my alma mater, if you wanted to be a tour guide, a, it was a volunteer position. B, it required a ton of time, and C, it was a highly selective process run by other tour guides. And so it's kind of this self fulfilling circle. If you if you're a student who had a work study job, the demands were asked of you made that work study job not possible. And so for the privilege of being a tour guide, you couldn't have a work study job. So you were giving up money to do something for free, and that was considered a really prestigious position. And so if there's something that's keeping your student outreach on behalf of admissions from being reflective of your campus community, you got to step back and ask, why? Ask the students who are involved why. And ask the students who aren't involved why as well. Okay, number 26 you know, earlier and I said everyone needs to register to vote. If you are that person who is going to college or the loved what loving adult of that person, learn about the absentee voter laws in your state, if your students leaving them to go to a different state, and also learn about the voter laws in that state if you are someone who's attending school there, because this is a tricky one. You want to make sure that your vote counts. You want to make sure that you're engaged always. And there are some states that are trying to take away the rights of college students from being able to vote where they attend school. There are some places that are trying to make getting absentee ballots for college students incredibly difficult. So let's say You're that kid and you're that kid and you're in those two states. Does this mean that you don't get to vote absolutely not make sure that you know what those options are. Number 27 similar to the question that I placed on college reps visiting high schools to learn about the culture, you all need to ask hard questions about what the what the culture is like at a college because you want to know like you're going to live there, you're going to be there. But also this is an equity issue, and by asking those questions, you are holding places accountable. You're holding them accountable for just being able to answer questions or being able to defend and truthfully. With so many incidents, a bias happening on college campuses. If a school can't talk about it, then what are they doing about it? I asked the similar questions that I asked the college folks as high schools, where do students socialize? Are they integrated when they're socializing? If there's a Greek system, is it integrated, or is it very much segregated? If there's student leadership, who gets involved, go beyond your tour guide. Go beyond admissions reps. Although asking admissions reps that question is really interesting. One talk with those students. Pay attention to newspapers, pay attention to flyers. Pay attention. That's a big deal. It's a really big deal. Number 28 I am saying this in front of you, Ethan, but because I know that your answer is a good one, okay, and because I know that you have a really broad audience of independent counselors who are really committed to this work. So I I'm saying this. I don't feel like I'm calling out in a good way if, as an applicant or one of their caregivers, if you decide to hire somebody, a test prep person, an independent counselor, an essay specialist, ask them if they're providing those services pro bono, no fee to under resourced students in schools. I begrudge no one for making money off of this process. I'm not that person the least bit, but I do think that everybody has a risk. Responsibility to share their privilege and to share this information. If you're going to hire someone, you want to make sure that they are, you know, members of the correct professional associations, and that they have experience, and that they're sharing all of that with you. But a part of your checklist also should be, what kind of pro bono work are you doing, and how much of it is your client base and and how are you sharing this information with people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford you.


Ethan Sawyer  35:21  
And if you're somebody listening, you're like, I'd love to do that. I'd love some ideas about how that works. Email me, and I'll share with my ideas. Number


Marie Bigham  35:28  
29 so close. Once you've done that search and once you've gone through the admissions process, now you have a skill set that somebody else didn't have, and you should share that, and some of it is as basic and straightforward and easy as donating your test prep materials or guidebooks to a local college if you're still using paper. There are also institutions that have what's called near peer mentorship, where you as a college student might be a few years older than an applicant. That's okay. You can be matched with someone, if you are an older student and you have an affinity with a community, volunteer with that community and share that information. But one of the things that's so tricky about the college admissions process is that sometimes it feels like clubby information, this is hard to get and hard to find, and then it's kind of opaque and it's difficult once you gain that knowledge set, share it, share it with others, so that we can all have that knowledge.


Ethan Sawyer  36:27  
This is something that I haven't released yet, but I'm going to start this Ambassadors Program because I've met some really incredibly dynamic students who've gone through the process and have learned a ton. And they're like, I want to help out the juniors. It's a great way, by the way, if your student Listen, is to fend off senioritis. Totally like it's a really cool thing to do in the January to June time when you're hopefully keeping your grades up and not Yes, please, yeah, not getting into trouble and not getting into trouble or doing things that would jeopardize your application. But like giving back and finding ways to do that, if you're interested in that soon, on my website, you'll have a little thing. It's called the ambassador's program, and it's about like equipping students with research. Students with resources that they can give you know, content and help students with their essays and


Marie Bigham  37:07  
stuff. So anyway, finally, even though we went over by three, number 30 is we all need to hold our institutions accountable when a bias or hate incident occurs, and they do, even if, and again, especially if it's not your your community that's being impacted. Remember that picture that came out this fall of the young men at a high school who were doing a Nazi saloon, and then there was one boy, one boy in the back who wasn't and there's a very clear look on his face that he was not down with that. And then he went on social media and talked about his role as a bystander, his role as a person in that community, and how awful it felt to be in that space. Hold your institutions accountable. If something happens, you stand up to your peers, and you stand up and you say something, and you go to the administration, and you go to the teacher, and you go to the people in charge, and you say that's not okay. That doesn't represent me. Whenever there's a bias Institute incident, rather, and institutions have that


Ethan Sawyer  38:09  
organization, I have thoughts.


Marie Bigham  38:14  
There's always the same statement, this does not reflect our values our community. It's like, well, yes, has to happen. So clearly it reflects some aspect of it. But when an institution says that you as the student, you as the caregiver, you say that doesn't reflect mine. But what are we doing next? You can't just send out that statement. You can't have one diversity training. You can't do that. You have to hold them accountable. And I think a lot of this conversation that we've had today is about holding accountability right, holding each other accountable, holding our loved ones account, holding self accountable, that's a really big part of this work, because it's those moments that slip by, that normalize them, that tell people who who carry the beliefs of bias that I'm not gonna get called out that's gotta be okay. You agree with me because you're complicit. Yeah, it


Ethan Sawyer  39:02  
was coming from me like, Who are you creating a safe space for? Right, right, right? Because there is a blip that happens when someone a moment of bias happens that sort of is sending out, and it's like, is that okay? Here, is that okay?


Marie Bigham  39:14  
Here's a little moment. Like I said, I'm multi racial, and I happened at a lunch table, people were discussing whether mixed race marriages should be okay or not. And this was, like, two years ago, so in 2016 and this was not at school, this was at a different was it a social thing? Should it be okay? Should it be okay? And I'm standing there like I would like to be allowed to be a thing. I would like my humanity and existence to not be an intellectual exercise, a point of conversation, but what I really needed in that very, very, very moment was for someone to say, that's not cool. WTF, right? And not just because I was sitting there, but in that moment, I needed to know that, and I was incredibly heartened. And someone who was a total stranger, who doesn't know me, who doesn't know my story, doesn't knows nothing stopped and was like, That is a really rude thing to say, and here's why that's hurtful. And that made me feel really, really good and safe and supported. And I thank that person later, and that thank you was my introduction to them, and yeah, holding each other accountable, I think is a really big step in this conversation.


Ethan Sawyer  40:28  
Hi friends. Thanks for listening. You'll find all these resources collected in a fancy dancy PDF that you can download at college. Sa guy.com/podcast just click on the Marie Bigham podcast. You'll also find a link to the Facebook group. If you are a counselor who's listening to this who wants to join, accept You are welcome, and also learn to embrace the discomfort. Thanks so much. And as always, stay curious. You.


Transcribed by https://otter.ai