By Jenna Sanchez
Jan. 27, 2021
After my first week of Fall semester, I was scared. I was scared that I wouldn’t find anyone else who looked like me or reminded me of home. The Multicultural Student Lounge was a place I found peace in after my 12 o’clock Spanish class with a Clif Bar in my hand–then, it closed almost two weeks later due to the pandemic.
I had faced culture shock before coming to Edgewood, but it was elevated here because it wasn’t just the lack of diversity I was dealing with. I was at school in a pandemic, learning to juggle college athletics and academia, and navigating a predominantly white college.
I knew what I was signing up for when I made the decision to come to Edgewood, and it’s a decision I do not regret. However, I didn’t realize the level of culture shock I would face upon attending.
I had experienced culture shock before. I was in fourth grade when I realized the difference between my peers and I. I began to see it more and more as I got older, fourth and fifth grade were when I began to notice it more as we went into deeper and heavier topics, specifically in my history and social studies classes.
I went to a private elementary school, where there were some students of color but not many. The wealth gap became very clear for me to see and racial/ethnic differences became very evident for me.
I experienced culture shock again once I got to high school and I was in my driver’s education course. I was one of five kids that weren’t white in my class. Again, I could see the wealth and racial/ethnic differences as I was getting dropped off in a Honda and my white classmates were dropped off in Benzs and Audis.
I come from a very diverse background with schooling and have grown up around my beautiful Mexican culture. I wasn’t prepared to be surrounded by so many white people.
I felt this way coming to Edgewood. I was anxious and uncomfortable to be surrounded by so many white people that I felt like such an outsider. It was a feeling that was sadly familiar.
Edgewood has done a lot for its students of color in regard to creating safe spaces for them, clubs for different racial and ethnic groups, and making an entire department dedicated to diversity. However, due to the pandemic, the Multicultural Student Lounge was forced to shut down temporarily. This caused students of color to not have a safe space on campus.
I haven’t been on campus for very long, but the Multicultural Student Lounge was a space that I felt very comfortable in outside of my dorm room. It felt safe. I saw people that looked like me and reminded me of home.
According to data on the demographics of Edgewood College, from College Factual, only 12.4% of students are Hispanic, Black, Asian, or Native American. Meanwhile, 78.9% of students are white. This is why we need safe spaces, more than just one.
When the Lounge had closed down for the semester, I felt very isolated and stuck. I felt that I couldn’t find another space that provided a piece of home for me.
Safe spaces have proven to be helpful for students of color. In a Time article, Raeann Pickett notes that little to no safe spaces can “compound the mental toll of racism.” These are areas designed to make students with marginalized identities feel comfortable and help them learn better.
This is exactly why we need more safe spaces on campus, though, because with only one space, our students of color have no space for themselves.
Returning home from Edgewood was a breath of fresh air because I was back in my space. College isn’t supposed to be extremely comfortable as soon as I get there, I understood that, but I didn’t understand why there wasn’t as much being done for the students of color coming on campus. Students of color aren’t coming into college with the same needs and concerns that our white students are coming with.
For instance, Emily DeRuy writes in the Atlantic that black students are “far more likely to come from high schools that lacked advanced resources, to be low-income, and to be first-generation students.”
Safe spaces are simply the bare minimum for a college to provide for its students of color, and having one isn’t quite enough. These spaces do not magically solve cross-racial issues at a predominantly white school, but they’re a step in the right direction. It could go further than spaces, though. Edgewood can take several steps to help students of color: students feeling supported and validated in the classroom, providing more scholarship opportunities for students of color, and a staff that is more diverse.
For instance, white male students are more likely to “gain legacy admission and earn merit scholarships,” writes DeRuy. This is where the idea of scholarships geared towards students of color would be helpful because 90% of Black and Hispanic college students are first-generation students in comparison to 28% of college white students, according to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute (PNPI).
Scholarships open a door of opportunities for a lot of students, but ones like the Alumni Award and Community Scholars Award aren’t widely available to students of color, given that, as reported by Data USA, Dane County is 79.1% White and there was “20.6 more white graduates than the next closest race/ethnic group.”
These are all tasks that I believe our school, and more specifically Edgewood’s “Task Force on Dismantling Racism,” has the capability to fulfill.
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