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 October 8, 2025 issue has 19 articles total, including four Sports, five Opinion, five Arts & Life and five News articles. DEI evaluates topics of articles by general theme(s), allowing task force members to select multiple themes. In this edition, topics primarily focus on campus events, politics and current events. Current events are different from campus events because they cover general events at the country level. Pieces that mention race and ethnicity are spread throughout but include two references to White identity groups, one to an Asian group, one to a Middle Eastern group and one to a “people of color” identity group.
There were no explicit mentions of Hispanic/Latinx, Native American or Pacific Islander identity groups. Since October 2024, the number of references to Pacific Islander and Native American identity groups has been consistently low. The race and ethnicity summaries highlight the need for more intentional Pacific Islander and Native American representation in the paper. In this October 8 issue, none of these articles focused on specific racial or ethnic identities.
The campus clubs or organizations mentioned in this edition include Emory Sustainable Business Group, Chabad at Emory, Emory Hillel, Emory Eagles for Israel, Emory-Israel Public Affairs Committee, MEOR at Emory, Emory men’s soccer team, Emory’s women soccer team, The Emory Wheel, Emory’s men’s and women’s swim and dive teams, Emory Autism Center, Emory's Autism Advocacy Organization, Oxford College's Neurodivergent Advocacy and Support club, Oxford chapter of Best Buddies, Student Government Association, College Council and Honor Council.
Mentions of politics include two entries labeled “Democrat,” two “Republican,” one “Trump,” one “Pro-Israel,” two “DEI” (one for and one against), one “corruption/protest” and one entry entitled “research funding.” This distribution is largely equal but has slightly more right-leaning representation throughout. This finding demonstrates there are gaps in moderate or centrist political representation. Note that this metric is based on pure mentions of political ideology and is not a representation of the ideological perspective of the articles.
To represent more diverse topics, writers and editors at the Wheel might also consider covering more crime and sexuality. These topics were not represented in the October 8 print edition.
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.
