The Southern Conference announced the formation of a 15-member Racial Equity and Justice Task Force on Tuesday. It counsels the league identifying concepts and developing actionable items that can be used by all member schools to improve racial equity and social justice.
The panel is composed by a racially diverse group of student-athletes, coaches, campus administrators and athletics staff members. It includes at least one representative from each of the league’s 10 full member institutions.
Chattanooga is represented by Head Men’s Basketball Coach Lamont Paris and Assistant A.D. for Compliance Ken Jones.
“This is a great initiative by our conference,” Jones shared. “It gives us a chance to impact all of our schools and programs in a positive way as we learn from each other. We’ll be able to share ideas and best practices from our own experience while seeing what works on other campuses.
“Most importantly, this is a step towards further developing the student-athlete experience. That’s what I think is most important moving forward.”
According to the league’s release, the main tenets of the task force’s exploration are:
- Promoting diversity
- Education
- Support for key constituents
- Awareness
- Marketing
The group meets regularly, seeks input from campus and community constituents and aims to engage in conversations with student-athletes on the focus areas. This includes raising awareness about mental health. It also supports the NCAA and SoCon SAAC’s voting initiatives social media campaign with each SAAC’s on-campus efforts.