In June, The Daily Californian reaffirmed its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. This is an ongoing commitment, one that must take priority in every aspect of our organization, including recruitment. Part of this is being transparent and continuing to release our hiring demographics every fall and spring.
We received a lower amount of applications overall, likely because the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic have prevented many students from taking on more responsibilities. The online format does not work for everyone, and new students might have found it difficult to find us in the earliest weeks of school when our applications were open. A number of Daily Cal departments also did not recruit this semester due to our reduced print schedule and virtual operations.
Self-reported racial identifications of Daily Cal candidates are not shown to department editors and managers on applications to help ensure a fairer process of deciding who to interview and accept. For the first time in recent memory, applicants were able to select more than one race instead of only being able to choose the multiracial category. If they chose two races, each counted as 0.5 for its respective category, 0.333 if they chose three races and 0.25 if they chose four races. We acknowledge that this is still an imperfect way of counting people but find it preferable to lumping multiracial students into one broad category.
Going forward, we must actively seek to recruit and retain minority students in our business departments in addition to editorial. More specifically, we must proactively engage Black, Indigenous and Hispanic/Latinx students by inviting them to apply to the Daily Cal and supporting them throughout the process. The diversity, equity and inclusion hiring manager will spearhead this effort through more targeted outreach to the many campus groups representing these students. The Daily Cal is also exploring how we can improve our current work accommodations so we can support students from various backgrounds, such as students who must work other jobs or students with disabilities.
