![\"Banner](\"https:\/\/www.sfc.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/Upload\/New_SFC_Banners_News.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSukhi Bains reflects on respect, dignity and privilege.<\/p>\n
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Respecting people’s diversity is key to ensuring dignity amongst our local to global communities of different identities. Being a committed ally on equality diversity and inclusion is not enough in the education sector if one is to make meaningful advances in the sector. From the 1990s I focused on facilitating discussion towards multiple-identity cohesion within communities, and empowering professionals and student representatives to gain meaningful diversity outcomes \u2013 one could refer to this approach as being a change agent, which many EDI Practitioners actually are.<\/p>\n
My first meeting with the SFC was in 2010, which coincided with the introduction of the Equality Act (2010) in the UK. It was a time of dynamic change for legislative protection, which was hitherto quite limited for people of different religions or beliefs and sexual orientations within both further and higher education. In November I was delighted to become the EDI lead in a working group facilitated by Universities Scotland, seeking to review national student misconduct procedures. Here I found that the approach to EDI was in fact very much about embracing an understanding of protected characteristics, and engagement with people of different backgrounds.<\/p>\n
Being privileged has many forms, and I feel that if one is in a position as an EDI change agent, then such a role ought to be considered as a privileged one, as it can better society\u2019s acceptance of our diverse communities. I say acceptance here, as a society being tolerant is just not enough for everyone to feel they belong; have equal chances; or even an equal say in our working, studying and public environments \u2013 the [recent] election would be a good barometer. I for one, would certainly not like to be thought of as someone that Scottish society feels they ought to tolerate, as being accepted is the goal.<\/p>\n
In a time where visible comments of hate seem to become normalised throughout social media globally, allies to the EDI cause are even more much called for, so that society has a better chance of acceptance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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