Inclusiveness group cuts ties with SGA

Once just a subcommittee of the Student Government Association, Students for Inclusive Excellence has taken on its own independence as a full-fledged organization at the University of South Dakota.

“We’re unifying our interests, and we’re unifying our energy so we can promote and further the mission of inclusive excellence with a bottom-up approach to focus on the students at the bottom, who are the most important,” said junior Michelle Corio, administrative director for the group.

SIE was a last year addition to SGA  with the purpose of enabling every individual to thrive in their own skin, according to Corio.

The student group consists of members from diversity groups already established at USD with the intention that those leaders can reach out to their members and spread the message in a “trickle down” effect to reach other students.

Corio said SIE has members from the Union for African American Students, the 10% Society, the Secular Student Alliance, the Student Government Association as well as the Tiospaye Student Council. Two of those members include Taylor Moore, the marketing director for SIE and Tyler Tordsen, director of the legislative team.

Moore said he plans to unify the campus by simply getting to know as many students as possible.

“My mother is an educator, and one thing I learned from her and her experiences is that the best way to get students to learn is knowing who they are – not just their name, but where they come from and what value systems they have,” he said. “When you get to the core, that’s when you get the best out of them, and that’s what we need.”

When the organization was still in the beginning stages last year, Tordsen said “It was a lot of talk.” Now, he said, the SIE is evolving into a credible group that has set priorities and means to make these goals a reality.

“Getting the formality out of the way was necessary,” he said. “Now they have a format, and we can recruit people, and those smaller teams can set the goals from there. Our goal is to get members, and have the campus and the community exposed to the mission. The actions and goals are really going to take off on their own.”

As former president of the Tiospaye Student Council, Tordsen has seen the importance of acceptance first hand. He is Caucasian and Native American, which he said has helped him look at things through a different perspective.

“When I would visit family on the reservation, I was the white kid, but when I was going to school in Rapid City, I was the Indian kid,” Tordsen said. “I was living both of those, but I use that as a reminder not to judge, and to remind myself that I do not know everything. I like to think I can relate to people, because I have my own story of diversity, but nobody really knows anybody’s story. You have to be able to listen.”

Corio set about creating SIE in just that way: emphasizing the importance of listening.

“I would meet people in my classes, I would meet people in the MUC, I would meet people walking, I would meet their friends and I would ask them if I could sit down with them and ask them about their experience,” she said.

And what Corio found, she said, was that students in their third year on campus and first-years were all facing the same problems.

“People needed to know they weren’t alone, and people were feeling like they were,” she said. “It’s a huge adjustment, and it’s nice to know people are there to support you no matter how you’re feeling.”

So, Corio began reaching out to leaders of the organizations at USD.

“I’m huge on collaboration, and I thought we could bring together the leaders of these groups,” she said. “They all have something in common: They all want to make the people involved in their organizations feel welcome and they want them to feel confident.”

Corio also felt some pushback as she continued to research and speak with students on campus.

“I’ve never felt un-included; I’m part of the majority gender on campus and I identify with the dominant racial group,” she said. “So, I completely respect the pushback, and I completely understand how it could be misleading at first, but it doesn’t matter the color of my skin or the fact that I’m a woman. This is something that needs changed, and it doesn’t matter who you are. It matters how you feel.”