Dear WPA-L members and beyond,
Thank you to all who participated in the survey the WPA-L Reimagining Working Group sent out. We are pleased to share the results and begin discussing next steps for the WPA-L.
As a reminder, the WPA-L Reimagining Working Group began our work with the collaborative document created by WPA-L members several months ago. In this collaborative document, members voiced ethical guidelines for participating on the WPA-L in the wake of some controversial and harmful conversations. With this document, the WPA-L Reimagining Working Group created the participation guidelines and the moderation board proposal rationale. We provided these documents before and while the survey was live in order to democratically choose to implement and emphasize the guidelines and moderation board.
Of the 4,344 people currently subscribed to the WPA-L, 213 people participated in this survey. According to our results,
- 78% of respondents voted in favor of adopting the participation guidelines.
- 62% were in favor of the moderation board, the majority supporting rotating volunteers. As a reminder, the moderation board’s ultimate goal is intervention, not punishment, if conversations fall outside the participation guidelines.
- 47% of you were in favor of retaining the current list name (of the 5 options provided in the survey), which means the WPA-L will remain the “WPA-L”!
Thanks again to everyone who participated in the survey and to everyone who offered suggestions and feedback along the way. Your ideas and observations have been invaluable. If you have questions or comments, please direct them to the working group's shared email address: wpa.lworkinggroup@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
The WPA-L Reimagining Working Group
- Kyle Bohunicky, University of Florida, kbohunicky@ufl.edu
- Karin Evans, College of DuPage, evansk@cod.edu
- Christine Garcia, Eastern Connecticut State University, garciachris@easternct.edu
- Traci Gardner, tengrrl@tengrrl.com
- Mara Lee Grayson, California State University, Dominguez Hills, maragrayson@gmail.com
- Regina McManigell Grijalva, Oklahoma City University, drreginagrijalva@gmail.com
- Holly Hassel, North Dakota State University,, holly.hassel@ndsu.edu
- Brian Hendrickson, Roger Williams University bhendrickson@rwu.edu
- Adam Hubrig, University of Nebraska-Lincoln adamhubrig88@gmail.com
- Barry Maid, Arizona State University, Barry.Maid@asu.edu
- Cara Marta Messina, Northeastern University, messina.c@husky.neu.edu
- Bernice Olivas, Salt Lake Community College bolivas2@slcc.edu
- Mike Palmquist, Colorado State University, Mike.Palmquist@colostate.edu
- Iris Ruiz, ruizirisd@gmail.com, UC Merced