By Keith Bartosek

La Roche offers Film for Thought events meant to highlight and raise awareness for various types of diversity. Sarah White leads these events. 

Sarah White is La Roche University’s executive director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. She is also the chief diversity officer and is on the President’s Executive Council. 

When she is not on the La Roche campus, she is a member of the Community of Reconciliation Church and Ross Elementary PTO’s Playground Committee. 

She obtained a master of arts in educational leadership in postsecondary education, with a specialization in student affairs from San Diego State University. A graduate of Slippery Rock University, she also holds a bachelor of science in social work.

Q: What originally made you interested in starting the Film For Thought events?

“Full disclosure, I didn’t come up with this idea. I have to give credit where credit is due to one of my predecessors. The office was called Diversity Inclusion, and the woman who was running that had actually coined that phrase and came up with it. When she left the university and I stepped into this role, I was kind of looking at some of the things that she was doing and thought, I absolutely love this. 

It’s to expose folks to different perspectives and different ways of life that you routinely maybe wouldn’t come across. Because, you know, let’s face it, we all tend to kind of operate in our circles. Our circles tend to reflect who we are, right? You have to be pretty intentional to get a different perspective and I think it’s sometimes a safer way for folks to sort of dip their toe into that.”

Q: What are your personal goals for the Film For Thought events or what do you hope to achieve by showing these films?

“Getting people to look at a different way of life or a different perspective. Getting people to reframe and look at things from a different way is super important and motivates me to do it.”

Q: What is the importance of showcasing these movies and making students aware of this diversity?

“Diversity isn’t just difference. It’s so much more than just race, right? We’ve done a lot of things around race and ethnicity. We’ve done LGBTQ. We’ve done ability and disability. I remember thinking as I put this movie on [The Florida Project], I thought, you know, this is another realm of diversity that we don’t talk about a lot. This is one we haven’t dived into before. I don’t think we’ve done anything with socioeconomic status.”

Q: The new Executive Order designed to terminate DEI will have an impact on higher education–although La Roche is a private institution, do you think this will have any effect on the events you hold including Film for Thought?

“Yes and no. I don’t think it will necessarily impact our events. And you’re 100% right. We are a private institution; the way the executive order is written, technically it is for government organizations. But there is some caveat there about federal funding and things. 

We’re in a really great unique position in that so much of the work that we do is around diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. When you look at the Sisters of the Divine Providence, I think we think of them now as these older, you know, reserved women and they were out on the front lines. They were at protests. They were getting arrested. 

That’s in our blood. That’s in our DNA, so to speak, as an organization, as an institution. We’re going to be doing a lot more work with the sisters and social justice team too. That’s why I say yes and no. I don’t think it’s going to change much in terms of specific programming or what we do, but I think it’s going to change our perspective in some way.”

Q: If the order is passed, how do you plan to keep including and promoting diversity and inclusion on campus? 

“Again, working with the sisters a bit more. We are in the process of creating with the sisters the Kettler Center for Peace, Justice and Inclusion. That will be really a big sort of umbrella center of all of these different areas that are doing that work. I think it’s broadening us and making us connect more and find different resources just within our own house so to speak. 

That will be launched officially later in the spring. That’s the biggest change that I see, but at the end of the day, we still want to support students. We still know that our students come from various walks of life. So we wanna make sure that we’re giving voice and opportunity to those and that’s something the sisters have always done.” 

Q: Are there ever certain topics you plan on educating students about with these films, or is it more like you come across one and stick with it?

“I try to do things that are relevant to something that’s going on. Relevant to the calendar, sometimes relevant to things I’m picking up on and hearing whispers of. Maybe somebody might file a bias incident report saying they’re noticing a particular group being mistreated or things being said. Maybe we can show a movie about that and help to get the word out of how that can be handled differently.

Sometimes I’ll just come across something and be like that looks really good, and that would generate a lot of discussion. I very much believe that these are things we should be doing all year round. So sometimes I like to mix it up. Just because it’s a particular month doesn’t mean we need to do it in that month.”

Q:  Do you tend to focus your film selections around major celebrations/holidays (including Black History Month, Día de los Muertos, etc.)?

“I try to when it comes to the holidays because I am in charge of programming for specific holidays and heritage months. For example, we’re now in black history month. I do try to do that as much as I can but then I like to mix it up sometimes too.”

Q: How do you discover the films that you advertise around the school?

“I don’t tell a lot of people, but I get my movies from all the same places you all do. I’m streaming them off of Amazon Prime or Netflix. Occasionally I’ll sign up for like a three month subscription to Max and get them from HBO or something. 

But for the most part, they’re fairly accessible films every once in a while. I’ll get one that might be a documentary from an organization, you know, it’s like a limited thing. And I kind of wonder about that. Technically, people could just watch this themselves. They don’t need to come with me to watch it with. But some still do.”

Q: Not many people show up to these events – why do you think that is, and what solutions would you/have you tried to increase these numbers?

“You know, it’s been tough because I think that it’s really difficult that we don’t have a common hour where everyone’s available. Some schools do have a certain period, you know, one or two days a week where there’s no classes scheduled, and so that’s often times where clubs and orgs meet, or people have meetings. We really don’t have that, so I feel like I’m always going to be missing someone no matter what I do. 

I tend to not schedule these things that far ahead, but it might be more convenient if we have a full semester schedule. But I don’t always like to commit too far ahead of time. Just trying to find that sweet spot of time. Not everybody wants to come back out in the evenings, but I also rarely show movies during the day just because of classes. I assume that most students couldn’t sit for two hours.

I will say that students, when they sometimes have to do a film, they have to do some sort of out of class experience for LRX, right? That does tend to drive attendance. But you know that can be tough too, because even though that obviously gets bodies in the door, that’s not always people who are genuinely curious or interested.”

Q: Was there anything else you wanted to talk about that I didn’t mention?

“It occurred to me that I’m the one picking the movies all the time. I would love to get suggestions. And that might actually get more interest with people. Like getting some sort of suggestion box or emails or something together so we can get more input from folks on what they want to see. 

We’re going to be doing an inclusion form on February 19th that just sort of gives some information about the executive orders. I have somebody from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission that’s going to come in and talk about share a little bit. We have an immigration attorney that many of our students have worked with. I have a faculty member here who is very much an advocate for LGBTQ stuff. 

So that’ll be a good opportunity I think for students just to try to get some information on the facts. And it’s hard because it feels like every day there’s something new coming out. It can be really hard to kind of keep up with and stay on top of, but understanding what it means for us in, you know, as college students, as Faculty and staff, but also for the wider community, the wider world.”

Me: So the event that you’re doing, is it purely just to inform people?

“We’ll have these folks sort of set up as a panel. So I’ll have some prefab questions that I’ll ask them and discuss. We’ll open up the floor for questions and you know there might be some specific stuff that people are wondering about. 

And I’m hoping they can really just give a lay of the land in terms of, you know, this is what that Executive Order means. We’re not going to go through all of them obviously, because that’s impossible, but specifically the things facing immigration, DEI, a little bit into Title IX because that impacts gender and LGBTQ. 

So we’re going to make sure that we’re at least kind of going over that, just helping folks to try to navigate it a little better.”