‘Humans Of Wharton’ On Diversity & Inclusion

STARTING WITH AWARENESS

Return on Equality member makes a poster. Courtesy photo

A Return on Equality member makes a poster. Courtesy photo

ROE is using Humans of Wharton to get students engaged in a conversation about diversity and inclusion. “We think of ourselves as more of a coalition that helps the school represent different voices,” says Saba Shafi, second-year MBA and another of ROE’s co-chairs. “On a high level, it starts with awareness, then moves to empathy, engagement, and finally advocacy.”

Humans of Wharton addresses the first step, awareness, by giving students a platform to tell their stories about racial identity, religion, sexuality, gender, and more. Often, Tang says, it can be easier to talk about difficult subjects through a story that a classmate has shared.

Some of the featured stories discuss students’ childhoods and the challenges they faced concerning race, religion, and family. One student writes about an experience in third grade when a classmate asked about her race in a way that, at the time, neither realized was offensive. The student discusses how it can be difficult to ask and answer questions about ethnicity, and concludes that ignorance is as rampant as malicious intent — if not more so.

Another participant, whose brother has been diagnosed with autism, writes about the stigma around mental illness. She points out that it’s nice, when talking about equality, to talk about the people who are not usually represented in places like business school.

ROE will sometimes help participants write their stories, Shafi says, but the help is mostly in choosing which story to tell, and not so much in how they tell it.

IT’S COMPLICATED, BUT INSPIRING

Humans of Wharton is only the beginning for ROE, Shafi says. The group is still figuring out how to introduce the next steps — empathy, engagement, and advocacy — to the Wharton community. Their long-term goal, she says, is to ensure that Wharton graduates go into the workforce as allies of diversity and inclusion.

Shafi says members of Return on Equality have been inspired by the amount of interest in Humans of Wharton — in particular by the interest from this year’s incoming class, as well as from other MBA programs.

“Diversity and inclusion is not always the easiest thing to talk about, but these are questions that go beyond any individual school or institution — they are pervasive across society,” Shafi says. “I’ve been very proud of my classmates and my school to see how willing people are to engage in a discussion.”

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