RIC

 How does whiteness and white supremacy culture impact the youth and educational spaces that you inhabit? What does it look like? Feel like in your body and movements? How does it sound? Taste? Slip by or call out?

In my current position as Interim Program Coordinator for Student Activities I oversee all of the student organizations on campus as well as plan events on campus for students. I am very intentional with my programming to ensure all students feel welcome, safe and to create a sense of belonging here at RIC. I wanted to start off with a quick story that popped in my head as I was doing our readings for this week. Just the other day in my staff meeting we were discussing a minor incident that occurred on campus where an off-campus group came on the quad to set up a table during free period. We were discussing what rules and parameters there are at RIC to ensure the safety of our students. One staff member said that since RIC is public property anyone can come on campus and set up a table as it is freedom of speech. We then got into a bigger discussion about the safety of our students on campus. I brought up the point in saying that if a white supremacy group came on the quad and set up a table on campus, we would be ok with it and let it happen? Granted the group that came on campus was a local nonprofit organization but what if it were to the extreme of it being a white supremacy group? I could not help to feel sick to my stomach thinking that something like this could actually happen on our campus. Within the website "White Supremacy Culture Characteristics" by Tema Okun they talk about the chains and what white supremacy instills:

• SCARCITY: White supremacy needs me to question whether I am enough and whether there is enough. It needs me to need it to lay out a scaffold I’m supposed to climb and lines I’m not supposed to cross so that I can be one of the swimmers, not sinkers.
  
• LOSS OF SELF: White supremacy needs me to have an identity crisis without and within it. Who am I if I am not good at x y or z? For example: what is the meaning of my life, my job, my relationships, if I accept there's no such thing as objectivity? If I let go of the binary how can I assure myself and others that I am not a fraud, or dishonorable or bad or unworthy or unlovable etc. 
  
• FEAR: White supremacy needs me to be afraid that I have everything to lose if I interrupt it; that if I speak truth to power, or fail to sufficiently revere the status quo, then I could lose my job, my life, my relationships.

With a quick google search I came across this website Rhode Island College Number of Employees, Statistics, Diversity, Demographics, and Facts - Zippia (I am not too sure how accurate the information is, but I have a feeling it is not far off). Whiteness is very prevalent at RIC within the staff, and I am part of that 67%. I recognize my privilege in that, but I don't think many employees on this campus do. All of the big decisions on this campus are made by mostly white staff and administration and that alone demonstrates the power and privilege of whiteness on RIC's campus. I also believe this institution tries to push the fact that we are a Hispanic serving institution (HSI) and boasts about it rather than unpacking what that truly means and how we can better support our students who identify at Hispanic or Latinx. Here is a brief article about the HSI designation at RIC. Rhode Island College Becomes First Institution of Higher Education in RI to Earn Hispanic Serving Institution Status | Rhode Island College (ric.edu) To me, this is a great accomplishment but is seems like a competition between the other state schools in RI kind of like a "we did it first" type of thing. The college did nothing to get the HSI designation the STUDENTS who attend RIC who identify as Hispanic or Latinx got us that designation.