Hesston College faculty, staff and students will gather this fall to dedicate the Community Healing Circle, constructed to the south of Alliman Administration Center.

The Community Healing Circle is an outgrowth from the work by the Task Force for Sexual Misconduct and Interpersonal Safety, which assessed Hesston’s campus climate, investigated the college’s commitment to safety and its mechanisms for addressing sexual misconduct. The task force completed its work in 2017, at which point the college initiated new processes, policies and training to build a safer campus.

In its final report, the task force recommended the creation of a physical memorial to acknowledge past shortcomings/errors in campus safety, and to mark the time when the college chose to do better as a community. The purpose of that memorial would be to create a physical acknowledgement of broken relationships and missteps in Hesston College’s history and create a space for our community to interact in thoughtful ways, as individuals or small groups.

The conceptualization of the Community Healing Circle was led by Hanna Eastin, art professor; Corey Regehr ’06, Campus Facilities; and Isaac Shue ’07. Eastin built the memorial, utilizing tiles created by Shue.

The Community Healing Circle represents one step in the college’s continued commitment to evaluate and improve campus safety for students, faculty and staff. Hesston College invites individuals to report any past or recent incidents of misconduct that occurred to local law enforcement or a local advocacy support organization (Safehope for the region surrounding Hesston College). We also encourage past campus-related incidents be reported through our online reporting form on the college’s campus safety pages