Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon Portland Community College

Cascade Council

The Cascade Campus Diversity Council is committed to creating a campus environment that fosters the values of diversity by actively educating its campus community in a variety of ways.

Our mission

To develop and maintain a campus climate that welcomes and promotes respect for the wide variety of human experiences.

Our values

A commitment to education, civic participation, and economic well-being through innovation and growth, driven by diverse perspectives and ideas.

Our vision

We envision a transformed campus, in which the needs of all people are met and where there is racial, social, and economic justice.

The problem statement

The Cascade Diversity Council addresses the problems of racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and other forms of oppression within our campus community.

  • We recognize that these problems cannot be faced in isolation from their broader social context.
  • We work to make the campus a model of social justice built on a thriving diversity, so that students, staff, and faculty can effect positive change in the culture and society beyond our campus.

Our challenge

To advance and incorporate diversity into every aspect of activity on Campus, including student life, curriculum, teaching, programs, staffing, personnel training practices, community services, and events. It is also to bring our observations and recommendations to the attention of the PCC district.

Our charge

The Cascade Diversity Council endeavors to implement a campus-wide, multi-faceted, comprehensive diversity program that will accomplish the following goals:

  • Create a campus environment that welcomes students, faculty, staff, and the public from diverse backgrounds.
  • Promote values and practices that discourage intolerance and discrimination.
  • Provide opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to develop intercultural competency.
  • Include knowledge and values from many cultures in the curriculum and extracurricular life of the campus community.
  • Take proactive steps to increase and retain the representation of people from diverse backgrounds among students, faculty, and staff.
  • Utilize underrepresented businesses in our purchasing and contracting when possible.
  • Create partnerships and relationships that are inclusive of all segments of the community.

Land acknowledgment

We would like to start this event by acknowledging that the room we are in rests on the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, bands of the Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other Tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River. Multnomah is a band of Chinooks that lived in this area.

We thank the descendants of these Tribes for being the original stewards and protectors of these lands since time immemorial. We also acknowledge that Portland, OR has the 9th largest Urban Native American population in the U.S. with over 380 federally recognized Tribes represented in the Urban Portland Metropolitan area. We also acknowledge the systemic policies of genocide, relocation, and assimilation that still impact many Indigenous/Native American families today.

We are honored by the collective work of many Native Nations, leaders, and families who are demonstrating resilience, resistance, revitalization, healing, and creativity. We are honored to be guests upon these lands. Thank you, and thanks also to our colleagues at the Portland State University Indigenous Nations Studies Program for crafting this acknowledgment.