The Student Government Association’s Justice Projects, a funding source created to advance diversity, equity and inclusion at Middlebury, has granted the Anderson Freeman Center $110,000 to use for travel-learning trips and speaker events throughout the year.
“The AFC is focusing on creating increased sense of belonging for the students we serve by building more sustainable year-to-year programming (not just one-off programs),” Director of AFC Derisa Collymore said in an email to The Campus.
“The trips or ‘Travel-Learning Opportunities’ will be learning experiences related to the history of marginalized and minoritized people in the United States and globally,” according to the SGA’s statement announcing the funding.
The AFC will be taking students to indigenous peoples’ historical preservation sites in New York during the fall, as well as the Smithsonian’s historical museums in Washington and the Schomburg Center in New York in the spring.
The AFC will also host events for a speaker series and nationally-observed heritage or history months that occur within the academic year. The center has tentatively scheduled Da’Shaun Harrison, a Black trans community organizer and author based in Atlanta, to speak in April 2021.
“We hope that these programs would serve as ways of coming together and finding community with others as well as a space for growth in identity, while also learning and sharing experiences,” Collymore said.
Katie Futterman '24 (she/her) is a Managing Editor.
Katie previously served as a News Editor and Staff Writer. This past summer, she was a news intern at Seven Days, and she held the same position at the Addison Independent the prior summer. In her free time, she loves to read, write, and bask in the sun.
