​A bigger, better CMA

Last week, the administration announced three new programming spaces for Asian-American, Latinx and Native American student communities in the expanded Center for Multicultural Affairs. We look now at what needs these spaces meet and at the importance of recognizing the efforts of groups on campus, such as Mi Gente and the Asian-American Alliance, which have advocated for such changes for years.

Immediately apparent is how the Mi Gente announcement that it would stop collaborating on the Latino Student Recruitment Weekend played a part in why these changes were so swiftly agreed upon. Previously, Mi Gente used its undergraduate funds for the admissions event, a reality that became untenable given that they found themselves “continuously disappointed with Duke and its dismissal of the needs of students of color.” After meetings through February, administration granted the programming spaces, independent LSRW funding and two other demands made by Mi Gente.

For activists on campus, Mi Gente’s actions serve as a case study of interfacing with administration. Here, what really shone were the necessity of disruption, when years of respectful dialogue had not worked, and the value of compromise through meetings and negotiation of what can and cannot be done. Inspecting the changes actually wrought by these methods, the new programming spaces stand to represent a symbolic commitment on Duke’s behalf to marginalized students as well as to offer students a physical safe and relatively sovereign space on campus.

To understand why these changes are important, we must remember that this university was never built originally for non-white students and that on our campus, and others across the country, marginalized students are still targeted. Symbolically, these new spaces are a commitment to not just have students of color and different backgrounds on campus but to have those communities shaping campus in their own right.

While we understand safe space is a charged term on campus and in national conversation, we maintain that the spectrum of student comfort and discomfort on campus is real to every individual’s lived experience and that it is important to disentangle the idea of a safe space from the action of self-segregation. For students who do not see their communities reflected in Duke’s broader student body, these changes offer a way to find a home of one sort or another. If a student even once makes use of the space in a moment of need or crisis, this validation is the founding motivation for this kind of change. Furthermore, these new spaces mean hiring staff who are Asian-American, Latinx and Native American. Currently, the Latinx community has few staff members of these backgrounds in mentorship roles, and the Asian-American and Native American communities have next to none. Seeing Duke choose someone who looks like you as a mentor and leader is crucial. Being able to connect with them in a safe space, even more so.

While not every student needs programming from their communities to feel included or even needs a designated cultural space to go to, these facts do not make the effort any less valuable for those who do. As cultural, social and political growth for communities happen in one area of campus life, as facilitated by these changes to the CMA, the positive feedback cycle of how designated spaces can affect the broader campus will hopefully pick up, along with students’ abilities to engage in these dialogues constructively. In tomorrow’s editorial, we turn to the importance of diversity and understanding racial identities in the interests of discerning what our campus community can do to be more welcoming and harmonious.