Bias Incident Resource Team
Bradley University is committed to its vision and strategic imperatives, which commits us to a Welcoming, Caring, Diverse, and Inclusive environment. We are committed to understanding and creating a community within and beyond campus that allows you to feel welcome and included in your ability to participate in the learning experience.
The purpose of the Bradley University Bias Incident Resource Team and protocol is to advance an inclusive campus climate by effectively and comprehensively responding to bias incidents. The Bias Resource Team is not meant to serve as an investigative or disciplinary body. Rather, it allows the team to provide timely and relevant resources to the targets, respondents, and community members who report, witness, or are responsible for the safety of the university community. The Bias Incident Resource Team enables the University to track and monitor bias incidents, collect aggregate data, identify relevant responses, connect individuals affected by bias incidents with supportive resources, and support/inform campus educational opportunities. The Bias Incident Resource team uses an outlined process to respond to all submitted incidents .
What is a Bias Incident?
A bias incident may be any hostile conduct, speech, expression, or action that is motivated, in whole or part, by bias or prejudice. It is NOT a hate crime in that bias does not involve criminal activity. The conduct, speech, expression, or action does not need to violate any federal, state, tribal, or local laws for review by the Bias Incident Resource Team or to be reviewed as a violation of University published policies.
Bias incidents are intentional or unintentional acts that discriminates, stereotypes, excludes, intimidates, mocks, degrades, threatens, or harasses a member of the Bradley University community based on a membership in a protected class.
Examples of a Bias Incident include, but are not limited to:
- Use of racial or ethnic slurs to identify or degrade someone using degrading language
- Racist or derogatory images/drawings
- Imitating someone with a disability
- Imitating someone’s cultural norms or practice
- Faculty or staff member making pejorative comments or stereotypes about a protected class of people
- Jokes based on stereotypes
- Calling someone the R-word, F-word, N-word, or other related name calling
Just because specific conduct, speech, expression, or action may be deemed offensive or inflammatory to some does not necessarily make them a bias-related offense. Bradley University values freedom of speech and expression and the open exchange of ideas. This includes the expression of controversial ideas and differing points of view, which is a critical part of the educational process. While we value this freedom, it does not protect an individual who engages in harassment or expressions of bias or hate aimed at community members or groups in violation of institutional policies.
