Inaugural Social Justice Summit brings together campus community to plan events, research and activities to effect change

Rodrigues, Jill

English

HELIN Digital Commons

Creating a Campus-Wide Social Justice Movement

DOCS@RWU

Roger Williams UniversityDOCS@RWUFeatured News Story The Week at Roger3-11-2014Creating a Campus-Wide Social Justice MovementJill RodriguesRoger Williams UniversityFollow this and additional works at: https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_newsPart of the Higher Education CommonsThis News Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The Week at Roger at DOCS@RWU. It has been accepted for inclusion in FeaturedNews Story by an authorized administrator of DOCS@RWU. For more information, please contact mwu@rwu.edu.Recommended CitationRodrigues, Jill, "Creating a Campus-Wide Social Justice Movement" (2014). Featured News Story. 214.https://docs.rwu.edu/weekatroger_featured_news/214 News ArchiveCreating a Campus-Wide Social Justice MovementInaugural Social Justice Summit brings together campus community to planevents, research and activities to e ect changeLittle Roger — the mascot of RWU's Pay Attention to RogerCampaign — in front of gra ti art collaboratively created by studentsand Tunisian street artist Oussama Bouagila, who spoke about socialjustice activism via art during a visit to campus last fall through anInclusive Excellence Mini-Grant procured by professor AutumnQuezada-Grant. Image Credit: Leah Catania '14 & AlexandriaWojtanowski '15March 11, 2014 Jill Rodrigues ’05BRISTOL, R.I. – What started with a weeklong series of events and activities inspiring socialawareness and activism at last fall’s Social Justice Week is now reaching across campus to includemore than 30 student groups, academic and administrative departments to work together on amovement creating social change and equity for all members of Roger Williams University. Fromcourses such as Writing for Social Change to events like Leadership Unity Day, individual campusgroups have already been encouraging more diversity, tolerance and cultural sensitivity – but thissemester, an initiative was launched to establish a campus-wide culture of social activism andinclusion.An e ort initiated by professors Laura D’Amore and Autumn Quezada-Grant at the inaugural SocialJustice Summit on March 5 – an evening of dialog and re ection on ways of bringing social changeto campus – the event facilitated in re-framing the idea of social justice and how the Universitycommunity thinks about the issues within our own environment. Via intentionally guidedconversations throughout the event, their goal was to not only open discourse around these issuesbut also launch a vision for change on campus.“We feel passionately about the social justice lens creating campus equity and change,” D’Amoresays.Thanks to event funding from an Inclusive Excellence Mini-Grant – small grant awards available to allRWU community members for a project or program that promotes diversity and inclusion – here are10 insights about social activism shared by D’Amore and Quezada-Grant at the Social JusticeSummit:So what, exactly, is social justice? Quezada-Grant’s preferred de nition is “promoting a justsociety by challenging injustice and valuing diversity.”  D’Amore explains that achieving equality and inclusion on campus requires “full and equalparticipation of all groups” within a community. It’s not just up to those feeling discriminatedagainst to try to e ect change – without contribution from everyone, real change cannot takeplace, and it bene ts all members of a community to eradicate systems of marginalization. AsMartin Luther King, Jr. pronounced, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”   Every college community has inherent challenges with oppression, privilege and poweraccompanying the diverse backgrounds of the students who attend. D’Amore explained thateducation is a right for all Americans at the kindergarten through twel h-grade level via publicschools; however, matriculating to college is a privilege that not all groups can realize – itrequires access to resources in order to achieve good grades (oppression and privilege) and,o en, the  nancial capital to a ord it (where power steps in).  Try a new way of thinking about the term ‘diversity’ as seeing every community as inclusionary asopposed to exclusionary. “For Roger Williams, why don’t we think about the diversity amongstourselves, and imagine we’re all included in this diverse environment,” Quezada-Grant says.“Once you include people, you can move forward.”  Collaboration is key to social justice e orts – without the involvement of all members of acommunity, elements of oppression will never be rooted out. “The goal is to create a communityof conscience – a university setting of people who feel included and who want to be includeother people, and are very conscious about the words they use and the decisions they make,”Quezada-Grant says.  Both say that the best way to spark such a movement is through events and activities in whichdiversity is not only experienced but also critically re ected upon by those who attend. Thinkingand processing through unfamiliar experiences changes a person’s behavior and will prompt theactive practicing of these new ideas and concepts.  That’s why they o er this advice: Don’t just hold an event surrounding social justice – create adirected, intentional outcome of learning where the student or faculty member is o ered theopportunity to practice their newfound knowledge. “Teaching people to encounter others andlearn to speak in dialog with people is very important,” D’Amore says.  There are three archetypes of people e ecting social justice, D’Amore says. The ‘ally for self-interest’ stands up to discrimination only for a person that he cares about but may still victimizeothers. Motivated by guilt from a privileged status, the ‘ally for altruism’ believes she must rescuevictims of oppression and will o en co-opt their voice in the  ght. But only the ‘ally for socialjustice’ recognizes that oppression a ects all members of society and works with disadvantagedgroups to create change.  Though sobering to identify which of the archetypes  ts each person’s individual belief systems,it helps to understand how thoughts and actions shape society. “When we change the way wethink, we can change the way other people think as well,” D’Amore says.  Following a brainstorming session of what each club, organization, student programming andacademic department could o er as an intentional learning experience, a full year of socialjustice programming is in the works for the 2014-15 academic year.

https://docs.rwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1213&amp;context=weekatroger_featured_news

Creating a Campus-Wide Social Justice Movement

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

HELIN Digital Commons

HELIN Digital Commons

DOCS@RWU