The Ethnic Studies Suite

This year the Intercultural Resource Center (IRC) has expanded its residential component to include an extension in the Broadway residence hall called the Ethnic Studies Suite. The Ethnic Studies Suite is a partnership between the CC/SEAS Office of Multicultural Affairs, the CC/SEAS Office of Residential Life, and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. This initiative advances the goals of the CC/SEAS Office of Multicultural Affairs by encouraging students to engage in intellectual inquiry focused on intercultural and diversity issues prominent in Columbia’s history, and how these issues affect our community today.

As a sophomore still trying to figure out what field I want to major in, the Ethnic Studies Suite has allowed my fellow suite members and me to test out a combination of academics with at least one of our interests: multiculturalism and social justice. Our suite plans to investigate and document social activism on Columbia’s campus from the ’60s to the present—from the “Gym Crow” protests of ’68 to the creation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs in 2002—by speaking to alumni who, through protest and civic engagement, played a significant role in the creation of today’s Columbia. We will eventually exhibit our findings in an oral history project using multimedia that will be available to the entire University community. We also have the opportunity to earn independent study credits by writing papers based on our research which will be presented at Columbia’s Ethnic Studies Conference in the spring of 2008.

I am aware, however, that being a member of the Ethnic Studies Suite has enabled me to access resources about Columbia’s history that the average undergraduate cannot. This is why the suite’s location in a traditional residence hall rather than within a brownstone is so significant to our aims. Integration within a wider community provides us with the chance to raise awareness about social justice issues and share our work with students living in Broadway and Hogan, thus reaching the wider University community. We plan to use the “Broadway Café,” a currently somewhat lonely lounge in the lobby of Broadway, to achieve this. We hope to convert the lounge by the end of the semester into a welcoming, accessible space that the Ethnic Studies Suite, IRC, and other campus groups will be able to use for programming (in keeping with Columbia tradition, of course, we plan on giving out free T-shirts at its opening). Our oral history project will be displayed here using photographs and other media so that passers-by can look at, watch, and listen to the documentation of a rich and often under-publicized part of Columbia’s history. The “Broadway Café” will also host multicultural events such as the popular open mics and dessert & discussion panels.

Not only is this significantly more interesting than my never-ending calc homework, it also allows me to discover more about the history of activism and protest that has shaped the University at which we all chose to study. Having been on this campus for just over a year, it sometimes seems to me as though high profile incidents—for example the racist graffiti found in a SIPA bathroom stall last week—and the protests that often accompany them are isolated from each other. Looking through the archives of this newspaper, I have realized that this assumption was false. It could not be clearer to me now that our University has been for many years a place where the wider struggles of our society have been played out in everyday life. In preparation for the oral history project, I pored over huge files containing Spectator articles from as far back as 1964 covering how wider issues such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and feminism played out on campus and affected University policy. For example, in 1970, students campaigned for Columbia to provide bail and defense funds for arrested local members of the Black Panther Party including Tupac Shakur’s mother, Afeni. Even more surprising to me was the mention of the Manhattanville expansion and renewal—currently the center of intense debate—as far back as 1965. Problems that existed forty years ago—discrimination, lack of understanding—are still prevalent today. The work of current Columbia students to address these problems has roots in the protests that undergraduates staged decades ago, continually demanding more from this institution and its members. It is this link and this history that makes us Columbians, more so than wearing blue and white at homecoming. The fact that we are an academic institution does not separate us from the “real world,” rather it gives us the opportunity to use the intellectual tools we possess to challenge the status quo and, pardon the cliché, make a difference. By that I do not mean to go out á la Bono and save Africa, but rather to think critically about how we relate to the injustices we see in our own neighborhood and within our community, and what we as a University can do to make lasting, positive changes for the future.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore.