Inclusive Excellence at Virginia Tech

September 8, 2020

This past weekend, Virginia Tech hosted its annual Gobblerfest as a virtual event. As many of you know, Gobblerfest introduces new students to the hundreds of student clubs and organizations to welcome new participation. One of these organizations is the Black Students in STEM (BSS) organization. Unfortunately, the BSS experienced an incident of "Zoom bombing" where racist chants were yelled during the group's live Gobblerfest session, realizing the worst fears of a hate crime that can be perpetuated in a public, live cyber event.

The university's response has been swift and appropriate both in terms of reaching out in support of the BSS students and in launching a formal investigation.

Sadly, this incident underscores the necessity and urgency of our inclusive excellence work. Our Inclusive Excellence team remains committed to the building long-term, sustained changes to improve our curricula, culture, and climate to make the university more welcoming and inclusive for all of our students, especially those historically marginalized in STEM and in higher education. While we wholly condemn this attack on the BSS, we know that our words are meaningless without action. We are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the Inclusive Excellence initiative and for the progress we have made to date, but remain unaccepting of a university climate where events like this are even a possbility. We will continue to grapple with how our work fits into a broader social justice movement and to remain humble as we learn to recognize our own privilege, biases, and ignorance as we strive to do better.

Fall 2020 COVID-19 Update:

The offices within Undergraduate Education will operate primarily remotely during the Fall 2020 semester. Our office in 104 Burruss Hall is staffed from 8:00 a.m. to noon and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 Monday through Friday. For assistance, call 540-231-3580.