The Emory Wheel’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) task force has recorded monthly data on each print week’s newspaper since October 2024. DEI developed this project to assess diversity and representation across the newspaper’s coverage. The task force also uses these results to design and implement initiatives that address representation gaps and inequalities. Topic summaries tend to be skewed towards campus events, as the Wheel mainly covers events on campus to highlight the greater Emory University community.
Methodology
The task force designates sections of the newspaper — News, Arts & Life, Opinion and Sports — to different task force members. Their responsibilities include thoroughly reading articles in each section, noting important details and transmitting that information into a database after careful review. The DEI editor(s) is responsible for reviewing and organizing the information for accuracy.
Summary and results
The September 10, 2025 issue has 20 articles total, including four Sports, five Opinion, six Arts & Life and five News articles. DEI evaluates topics of articles by general theme(s), allowing task force members to select multiple themes. For example 65% of submissions selected “Campus Events” as a theme at least once. In this edition, topics primarily focus on campus events, university administration, politics and culture. Pieces that mention race and ethnicity are spread throughout but include three mentions of Black identity groups, one Hispanic/Latinx, one Asian and two Middle Eastern. There were no explicit mentions of White, Native American or Pacific Islander identity groups. In this edition none of the articles focused specifically on racial or ethnic identities.
The campus clubs or organizations mentioned in this edition include the Emory Men's and Women's Soccer teams, Emory Women's Softball, Emory Women's Volleyball, Emory Men's Swimming, Research Experience for Undergraduates, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Student Government Association, College Council, University Senate, University Senate Committee for Open Expression, Emory Students for Socialism, Stand Up Emory and the Office of LGBT Life.
There are four mentions of right-leaning politics and five mentions of left-leaning politics. This distribution is largely equal but has slightly more left-leaning representation throughout. This finding demonstrates there are gaps in centrist political representation.
The race and ethnicity summaries highlight the potential for more intentional Pacific Islander and Native American representation in the paper — these metrics have remained consistently low since October 2024. To represent more diverse topics, writers and editors at the Wheel might also consider covering more campus clubs, sexuality and research-related topics. Covering these topics would fill gaps in topic representation.
The goal of the DEI task force is to have fair and equal representation of events and communities at Emory on the Wheel. If you have suggestions for any metrics we should include, please contact us at emorywheeldei@gmail.com.
