The Eagle has published a staff diversity report for the past two years in an effort to maintain transparency with the American University community. Results from a Fall 2024 Staff Acceptance Survey indicate that the population of staffers with disabilities and representation among Black and Native American staffers also fell between spring and fall 2024. The Eagle’s white population also fell a little over 15 percent.
Latinx and Hispanic (previously categorized as Hispanic or Latino in the spring 2024 report), Multiracial, East Asian, South Asian and LGBTQ+ representation increased since last semester. In previous DEI reports, “Asian” has been one category. This semester, this category was specified to include East Asian and South Asian staffers.
Staff diversity report
The data in this report was collected through the Fall 2024 Staff Acceptance Survey, a form all staffers fill out to officially accept their position. This semester, The Eagle has 122 staffers in total, a slight increase from fall 2023’s record high of 118 staffers.
The percentage of multiracial staffers increased 6.5 percentage points. South and East Asian staffers combined make up 16 percent of The Eagle’s staff, up 6.4 percentage points from last spring, according to data from the acceptance form.
The majority of staffers who disclosed their sexual orientation identified as straight, a drop of 1.9 percentage points from spring 2024. Excluding those who preferred not to answer, 40 percent of staffers identified as LGBTQ+, a slight increase from the close to 35 percent of staffers who identified as LGBTQ+ last spring.
A majority of staffers identify as female, a trend that reflects past semesters and the University’s undergraduate population. Those who identify as female comprise nearly 64 percent of the university’s full-and part-time undergraduate student population, according to the University’s 2023-2024 Academic and Data Reference Book (ADRB). Just under 1 percent of staffers identify as gender neutral/gender non-binary, agender and gender neutral/gender non-binary and genderqueer.
The majority of staffers identify as non-disabled. The percentage of staffers who identify as disabled decreased 5 percentage points from last semester. The percentage of those who chose not to answer increased 4 percentage points.
The number of staffers who received a Pell grant increased slightly from the past semester. The gap between the staffers who do receive financial aid, excluding Pell grants and those who do not receive financial aid, narrowed compared to last semester.
The majority of staffers are in the School of Communication, a total of 61 people, including those who belong to other schools as well. Twenty-one staffers are in the School of Public Affairs, and 11 people are in the College of Arts and Sciences. As explained in last semester’s DEI report, the data accounts for students who have majors and/or minors in more than one school, which explains why the sum is greater than the total number of fall staffers.
This is the first semester The Eagle has included the percentage of first-generation students in a DEI report. A first generation student is a student with no parent who has completed a bachelor’s degree, according to the 2023 ADRB.
Fall DEI committee efforts
The Eagle’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion group meets biweekly on Thursdays and seeks to improve the diversity of staff and coverage.
At the most recent meeting, Editor-in-Chief Abby Turner, News Managing Editor Tyler Davis and Multimedia Managing Editor Izzy Fantini discussed the ethics, challenges and best practices of including various interpretations of religion in recent coverage. The editors suggested speaking with American University professors who specialize in religion to ensure that baseline understandings of religion being covered are met.
They also suggested including a disclaimer at the bottom of articles that specifies how The Eagle reports on different interpretations of religion.
The DEI group has also resumed work on a DEI Archives Project, where staffers and editors discuss The Eagle’s ethical errors, “particularly those that target, dismiss or otherwise discriminate against marginalized communities on campus,” as phrased in the DEI Archives Project document. The purpose of the Archives Project is to acknowledge and recognize why The Eagle’s coverage was harmful and present its plans to remedy its ethical missteps.
Inaugural Eagle Advisory Board DEI committee
This semester, Turner, Cederlund and members of the Eagle Advisory Board established an inaugural Eagle Advisory DEI committee. The committee will meet three times per year and seeks to evaluate the culture of The Eagle and Eagle Advisory Board regarding DEI efforts and will produce a report of its findings at the end of the academic year.
This report was edited by Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Emma Brown, Sabine Kanter-Huchting and Ella Rousseau.
