Workshopping Respect
When more than 1,000 students, faculty, and administrators met for the March for Resilience in the fall of 2015, they sent a powerful message that major steps needed to be taken. An alleged racist incident at a fraternity and a repudiation of university-mandated political correctness revealed social fault lines and garnered national attention. Students protested against Yale’s institutional privileging of the white, wealthy, and male. The moment mobilized activism and drew the ire of detractors. Such impassioned responses from different sides indicated the need for not just reconciliation, but progress.
One small group of undergraduates called 5a is continuing the spirit of that fall. Active since Nov. 2017, the group is committed to creating a space for purposeful discussions about race, gender, sexuality, and wealth privilege. “We want conversations of power and privilege to be a larger, spoken element of Yale’s campus,” said Mariko Rooks, TC ’21, a member of 5a. “We’re furthering dialogue to hopefully create a better climate.”
Its name echoes back to impassioned calls for change. On Nov. 3, 2015, Next Yale drafted a letter to the senior members of the Yale administration. The group expressed its dismay with the university’s unwillingness to address campus inequalities and presented a list of demands. Section 5 of the letter called for “the immediate removal of Nicholas and Erika Christakis from positions of Master and Associate Master of Silliman College.” A secondary demand, subtitled 5a, called for “the development of racial competence and respect training and accountability systems for all Yale affiliates.”
The name does not signify direct affiliation with Next Yale — and the group has yet to fully agree on this title. For the moment, however, it continues to go by the name 5a, out of a respect for the legacy preceding them. “We wanted to choose a name that alluded to the tradition of activists before us,” 5a’s Kellyn Kusyk, SM ’20, explained.
The core eight members attend regular weekly meetings. A larger group of students are kept up-to-date through their panlist. The group’s horizontal structure emphasizes the sharing of tasks and responsibilities. Kusyk described the group as predominantly nonwhite and diverse across gender and sexual identities. 5a’s members have highlighted how important it is that the people in their cadre work well with one another. Each member has their individual reasons for involvement, be they academic interests, previous work or community experience, or political leanings.
“We aren’t necessarily the most qualified people to be doing this, but we recognize the fact that this needs to be done,” Rooks commented. “The value of humility combined with earnestness has worked well.”
Now, 5a seeks to develop and implement a Power, Privilege and Systems of Repression workshop, which assembles groups of new students to discuss systemic inequality. With the aid of trained facilitators, students confront these topics in a safe but directed setting, in the hopes of increasing the baseline appreciation for the nuances of gender, class, and race.
5a aims to have a pilot workshop for the incoming first-years ready by Camp Yale orientation of the 2018–2019 academic year. The group also hopes to continue offering voluntary workshops that would occur over the full year. Another long-term goal is to institute a four credit program in Ethnic Studies. It’s currently conceived as a summer session program and the hope is to incorporate it into the school year if it goes well. Mindful of the complexities of their subject matter, 5a is currently amidst the time-intensive development and testing phase for the pilot.
Rooks described the workshop’s three driving ambitions. The first is the simple acknowledgement that different groups possess power and privilege. Second, 5a wants to expose the history of the oppressive systems that cut across demographics. The last goal is to communicate why this work is important within an institution like Yale. Kusyk pointed out the university’s entrenched white supremacy built on generations of elitist homogeneity. “Those conversations are undesirable and even scary because they imply change,” they said.
The group has looked to similar programs at other universities — particularly in the Ivy League — for guidance on content and form. They also take inspiration from organizations that have conducted this sort of training at the high school or collegiate level. Rooks cited Kizuna, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to empowering new generations of Japanese-Americans via education, as a resource. The group, informed by these programs, considered the workshops’ level of difficulty — knowing that this would affect their accessibility. Ultimately, 5a has decided to create introductory-level workshops to allow those who are less familiar with these issues to still partake and be engaged.
Faculty and staff members serving on 5a’s advisory board have contributed to content development as well. The group specifically sought out Yale professors and administrators with backgrounds in History, Gender Studies, and racial scholarship. Dean Rise Nelson, the Director of the Afro-American Cultural Center, played an role in getting initial support for 5a. Crystal Feimster, an associate professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies, has agreed to serve on the advisory board and help shape their workshop’s curriculum.
Laura Barraclough, an associate professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, became aware of 5a’s activities after member Branson Rideaux, BF ’20, asked her to make an announcement to her class about the group’s first brainstorming meeting. She agreed to serve on their advisory board shortly after. Although she hasn’t advised them yet, she has a clear sense of what the group members are seeking from their allies.
“They’ve asked us to attend two meetings per semester, one at the beginning and one at the end,” she said. “They’ve asked us to meet individually with 5a members on request in order to hash out sensitive and strategic issues. They’ve asked us to attend one or more workshops to observe and provide feedback on how they’re conducted.”
Barraclough has engaged in this sort of work for some time. As an undergraduate majoring in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, she was a Diversity Peer Educator. These educators were trained to conduct a similar style of workshops. They hosted hour-long evening sessions and residence hall meetings. Sometimes they played key facilitating roles in student leadership conferences. Her undergraduate work was unpaid, but after graduating she was hired as a salaried staff member to help formalize the program.
She explained that workshops like these took inspiration from a decades-old methodological approach called Intergroup dialogue (IGD). IGD is face-to-face organized discussion between members of two or more social identity groups that aims to promote understanding, push progressive action, and uphold dignity. It has become a cornerstone for the evolution of Social Work, American Studies, and Ethnic Studies as academic disciplines. It stresses critical thinking skills, varying perspectives on issues, social awareness, and pathways towards collective action. The University of Michigan founded its seminal Program of Intergroup Relations in 1988, the first to formalize the IGD approach. The program has since been a model for numerous university programs.
What’s more, facilitators receive an education of their own. Barraclough recounted her time at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where she taught a Race and Racism class with three teaching assistants who served in a facilitative role. They learned strategies for absorbing students’ anger, frustration, or guilt. These positive communication techniques, like reframing questions or softening language choices, neutralized politically charged situations. There were no rewards or punishments, allowing students to be more honest and take risks.
5a strives to bring this learning experience to the Yale community. As it’s still in the development stages, they have yet to encounter any pushback — but the group realizes that as momentum builds, the likelihood of resistance could mount. “Outwardly, at least, diversity is in,” Rooks commented. “I think we’ll get more pushback once the final workshop goes before the Intercultural Affairs Council. That’s why being prepared, dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts, is really critical.”
More crucial to the group now are the logistical requirements of implementing a new educational program in a crowded academic schedule. The Communication and Consent Educations (CCE) program underwent a similar process to establish itself and integrate its teachings into community life. Melanie Boyd, who directs the Office of Gender and Campus Culture, explained how the Women’s Center, the Yale College Council, and the cultural centers combined efforts to support campus interventions. As momentum increased, different campus task forces and committee reports supported pilot programs addressing sexual climate and misconduct. Yale created the CCE program and the Office during the summer of 2011. The CCEs invest a great deal of time shaping their workshops, setting well-researched goals, training facilitators, and assessing workshop impact.
Speaking about 5a, Boyd said the group’s energy and commitment impressed her. “Developing effective training is not easy, so I’ve been glad to see them reaching out to those who can support their work.”
Moreover, there is the question of scope. Barraclough argued that this sort of program will truly impact only a fraction of the student body. Even with a compulsory session (or sessions), the demands of both orientation and the general academic calendar will undoubtedly limit the workshop’s effects. Some in 5a have proposed training members of groups not traditionally involved with this vein of social work, like sports teams and a capella groups. “You need to transform only a small group of people to build new leadership capacity,” Barraclough added. “Those people rub off on their friends. We can be realistic and still insist that this is important and valuable.”
Barraclough stressed how inexpensive it would be to implement these workshops, saying that approximately $50,000 per year would be enough to cover facilitator salaries, printing and photocopying, food and beverages, and other miscellaneous supplies. “The administration would be smart to support this,” she said. “The students are willing to do the work themselves. That should thrill them.”
The social disparities within the Yale community have become more conspicuous since the unrest in the fall of 2015. That semester’s demonstrations were organized to promote empowerment and solidarity among different groups. Productive communication between different groups is critical to wider unity moving forward, and that’s what 5a aspires to deliver.
