WHAT IS COLLECTIVE CARE @ SMITH COLLEGE?
This is a place to collectively design a new future for Smith College and to bear witness to the injustices experienced by our community members. This page is intended to be useful to all members of the Smith Community, including alumnae, staff, faculty and students.
ON BEARING WITNESS
Injustice and inequality are systemically erased by individualism and the myth of meritocracy. We let our reality become the only one we are aware of, and our world is made much smaller. Part of being a conscious member of a community like Smith is recognizing and celebrating the huge range in experience between all members of this community.
Regardless of your identity, we are in community and your liberation is tied to mine. I hope this space makes you aware of the lives of other students and gets you fired up to create a better future. I encourage everyone to reflect on the ways they can get involved in remedying these injustices, interpersonally, monetarily, and structurally.
Need help envisioning a better future?
Check out this video for some food for thought. Our imaginations for the future are deeply constrained by norms like white supremacy, classism, capitalism, ableism and more. This video is a good place to start with envisioning a future untouched by the inequality, that actively works towards a future without these same cycles of oppressions.
GOT MORE TO ADD?
I would love to collect as many stories as possible of injustices that have happened at Smith College, past and present.
These experiences are not isolated events, and they are not experiences you should have to carry alone. I hope that this can be a place where we can hold space for hard stories, and work towards creating policy change, as a community.
All are submitted anonymously, if you are comfortable submitting with your name, check out the forum page titled "Share your story" If you have document relating to a Smith College protest that you want featured please submit them in the forum
SUBMIT STORIES, DEMANDS AND EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL RECS HERE
SO WHAT CAN I DO?
Want to get involved in changing the culture at Smith and beyond? Here are some non-exhaustive ideas to get you started. First, ask yourself what your position in this injustice is, and what your degree of precarity is. Are you actively/passively benefitting from the system of injustice?
ex) a white student benefits from racial injustice at Smith, not because they get any explicit bonus, but because they are not being punished for being non-white.
ex) student A is white, and will receive minimal backlash for correcting a white student or professor on a racial microaggression, while a BIPOC student might face hostility or other repercussions for advocating for themselves.
In both of these instances, the student has a responsibility to...
GET INFORMED
Being unware of injustice is a privilege
SPEAK UP WHEN YOU SEE INJUSTICE
Injustice is often a burden people bear alone.
Do some research on the experiences of your marginalized peers. And while it can be easy to ask them to teach you, your education is not their responsibility. Check out some of the links and articles on the learn more page
Part of community care is speaking up in the moment when injustice happens. It's not on the only marginalized person in the room to speak up for themselves and for other marginalized groups.
USE YOUR PRIVILEGE
We all enjoy different types of privilege. Reflect on what yours is and how you can use it to your community's benefit
Have access to generational wealth or disposible income? Offer to cover group costs which are no big deal to you. Donate to mutual aid. Got connections? Help your friend with less social capital the internship of their dreams with someone your parents know.
SUPPORT STUDENT DEMANDS
Send emails, and use your voice
Ask that Smith meet students current demands, and meet dining and housekeeping demands for the upcoming contract year and adopt the proposed transparency model. Click here for an email template for student demands and one for the SEIU 211 union demands.