AFC Grand Opening Invites Discussion

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University and UCLA, filled Mead Chapel last Friday night as the keynote speaker for the grand opening of the Anderson Freeman Resource Center (AFC). Crenshaw’s speech was one of many events held over the weekend to celebrate the opening of the new intercultural center on Saturday, Jan. 16.

The opening of the AFC is the culmination of more than a year’s worth of effort by students and former Vice President of Affairs and Dean of the College Shirley Collado. The grand opening coincided with the College’s second Alumni of Color weekend.

Crenshaw is known for coining the term “intersectionality.” Her talk, titled “Intersectionality Matters: Why We Can’t Wait for a Racial Justice Agenda That Centers Us All” highlighted the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppressions are experienced.

Crenshaw spoke to changes happening on college campuses nationwide. She said: “We are at a moment to transform our society. In some ways, racial discourse has reached a new low with the presidential candidates. But at the same time, we have new forms of social justice agitation that have sprung the conversation back to life.”

She also talked about the defenders of Justice Scalia’s recent comments on black students’ incompetency at elite institutions. “If it is not institutional factors, structural factors, historical factors, that explain inequality, then we are talking about racial differences without talking about racial power, creating a formula for individual and cultural responsibility,” she said. “Individuals in their social groups are responsible for their lack of participation in higher education, for the lack of access.”

Crenshaw then turned her focus to injustice for women and girls in society. She discussed how critical it is to reverse the cycle of invisibility for women and girls with initiatives such as President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” which excludes girls and young women of color.

She asked the audience to identify the names of victims of police brutality, revealing that females were mostly unknown. “We don’t know who these girls are, because the media doesn’t tell you; our leaders don’t tell you,” she said.

Crenshaw concluded her speech with a plea for racial justice and inclusion. “I can’t think of a better time than now to create a new inheritance and a better legacy to foster creating inclusion for everyone. I hope we all lift up in our hearts the possibility of creating racial justice that fulfills the desperate needs of everyone and unfolds to embrace all of us,” she said.

The AFC will function as a center for the College community to come together to foster inclusion and education in support of students who have been “historically underrepresented or marginalized in U.S. higher education.”

“Meeting alumni who are doing amazing things makes me ask them how they survived. There was a joke at the keynote where Crenshaw was amazed that alumni of color actually came back, because I don’t know if I’d come back. But with the alumni here, and the center here, there is a sense of victory,” Jenn Ortega ’18 said.

The celebration continued on Saturday afternoon with a panel discussion titled “History of Diversity and Student Activism at Middlebury College.” Participants included Collado, Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernandez ’85, Leroy Nesbitt ’82, Alumni of Color and current students.

One of the first discussions addressed themes of collaboration. Nesbitt noted that student activism at the College has been important throughout its history. He said, “Every growth around issues of diversity have come from student activists. It was activism that created the Chellis House, the Jewish Center, Palana House and Coltrane. The spirit of collaboration also speaks to those faculty and administrators who were excited to see the student activism over the years so they could find ways to join in and support.

In 2010 Collado became the first ever woman of color to join the College’s administration. Last Jan. Collado left the College to work at Rutgers University- Newark but she has remained dedicated to efforts of diversity. She said, “We wanted to dream up what would it mean to move the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice to the center of a place rather than leaving it at the margins of a campus. Harder questions of policy, are we really talking about all students?”

Some of Collado’s turning points included leading a working group of faculty who made the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity possible.

“We felt that we needed a space for something as simple as, but as loaded as, using the word race in the name of a building, in the name of a place at the institution in 2007,” Collado said. “The issue of intersectionality was a great concern because if we focused on race, some assumed everything else would get lost gender, class, ability. But we worked hard to have race in the title.”

Collado also spoke about inclusion programs on campus led by students such as the First Generation Peer Mentoring Program.

“What also emerged were white students who cared, vocal about their curriculum and faculty not being as diverse as the student body, alongside, and sometimes separate, from students of color,” she said.
“There was amazing visibility in that the administration realized this is no longer an issue for just students of color, and this is going to hit us in the face repeatedly because the demographics of this nation are changing,” she added.

The dedication was followed by a ribbon cutting by President Laurie Patton. Associate Professor of History William Hart then gave a talk titled “To ‘engraven her [Middlebury College] an imperishable name ... with honor’: Martin Henry Freeman 1849, Mary Annette Anderson 1899, and the Challenges of Early Diversity at Middlebury College” Anderson was the first woman of color to graduate from the College and Freeman was the first African American college president in U.S. history.

Fernandez finds the AFC playing an essential part in talking, processing and making a plan of action. “Some people say we shouldn’t have a multicultural center because it separates. But collaboration is possible in that center. We live in a racist society and we need to think of our institutions. Students who felt they had no space on campus opened our eyes.”

Roberto Lint Sagarena, director of the AFC, called it a day of celebration, and a day of awareness. “The center is only as powerful as the community,” he said.