All of these are generated through comments to the form linked on this site, so demands and thoughts are not mine. All comments and additional demands should be submitted through this form. An important thing to consider while looking at this list is that these demands are currently unmet, so even though some of these changes are small, we have the chance to support our community members by asking Smith to implement them.

Transgender students

Smith College is a historically women's college which means that not all Smith students identify as women. And our campus is not always set up to support them, and here are some identified student demands to make Smith more accessible to transgender Smith students.

Removing deadnames

Create an easily accessible and comprehensive form which allows people to changed their name in the Smith system, which automatically updates in Moodle, email, the health center, transcripts, mail room emails, and on class rosters.

Using Gender Neutral Language

Use more gender inclusive language to recognize the trans and gender non conforming community, like 'they/them' and 'student' in the course catalog and academic handbook and on the Smith website,

Gender Neutral bathrooms

All bathrooms should be designated as gender neutral and full length stalls should be installed around toilets and urinals, or clearly designate gender neutral options in each building

Pronoun usage

Better training for all staff on using pronouns and why it’s important. An example of this is in language classes have students put their pronouns in English and the foreign language at the top of the worksheet/test so professors don’t take points off for misconjugation when the student is conjugating based on pronouns other than what the professor assumed their pronouns are

Trans Women

More active recruitment and support for trans women.

First Generation and Low-Income Students

Smith students come from a huge range of socioeconomic classes, but most college experiences, especially private colleges like Smith are tailored towards wealthy students and often forget that some of these experiences are inaccessible to low-income students.

Funding Transparency

Clearer lists of what funding is available for low-income students and what that funding can be used for, beyond the startup funding available for incoming first year students and the broad categories listed on the central funding form.

Textbook Funding

Increased support for the textbook fund, and clearer priority for students ranked by financial need. Further communication with students and the bookstore, since textbook funding can only be used at the Smith bookstore and the bookstore only has limited copies of textbooks which can sell out before textbook funding is posted.

Work Requirement

Removal of the ten hour a week work policy so that low-income students have more job opportunities available to them on-campus, without having to get additional work off campus.

Common Goods

Increased support for Common Goods, with clear priority for low-income students and a clearer definition of who Common Goods is intended to serve.

First Gen Support

More supportive programming and intentional mentorship for first-generation college students. Classes on financial stability and budgeting.

More funding support for healthcare

Additional funding and support for students without healthcare, and clear understanding of how to access that funding.

BIPOC students

BIPOC Staff and Faculty

Increased staff and faculty of color. Including more tenure track black professors, and not just in the Africana studies department.

BIPOC community support

More BIPOC-intentional spaces/houses/events, more opportunities for BIPOC students to connect and build community.

Mandatory Race Class

Smith should enforce that every student take at least one course (in whatever discipline) that focuses on critical race theory.

Anti-Racism Training

Anti-racism work within the administration to uplift BIPOC students, staff and faculty.

Centering diversity in curriculum

Emphasizing diversity within all curricula, not just in the social sciences and humanities. Emphasize using work from diverse academics and contextualize authors social and political backgrounds, as their work is informed by their identity, diverse or not.

Community support

Support for students of color on culturally relevant issues, events, community center and group activities. This could be facilitated through increased funding for the Mwangi Cultural Center.

Feedback Form

An easily accessible and simple way for BIPOC students to voice concerns or changes they would like to see, without relying on open hours or working groups which assume that students have an access of time and energy to advocate for themselves. The transparency model listed on this site would be one way to address this

Mentorship and support

Increased support and mentorship for BIPOC students to access all the components Smith requires to start or run a student organization.

BIPOC Alumnae

Better Alumnae networking with women of color groups and communication with current student groups on campus. Assistance from Smith's Alumnae Association to focus efforts to gear community for minority specific groups, or women in color as a whole, not just through umbrella Smith Alumnae Association that seems to group all alumnae together and limit alumnae networking with specific women of color alumnae and current students or established groups (Nosotras,BSA,etc) Including increase in financial budgets for specific minority groups (ie Nosotras, BSA,etc). Fundraising by Smith Alumnae Association. Visibility of specific groups in Smith Alumnae events in larger scale conversations.

Campus Police

Decrease the presence of campus police and increase intra-community support and trained de-escalation and metal health professionals.

Hiring Transparency

Transparency about the Student Relations hiring process, considering we have had several staff - deans and department heads alike - getting called out by Black students on campus for their racism. This is a working idea - what is Smith College doing to ensure that its applicants are committed to anti-racism work in a tangible way?

Indigenous Students

Christen Mucher’s indigenous land acknowledgement before Yvonne Tiger’s event about Angel DeCora, October 14, 2021: “Recall that although located in many areas, we are all on Native lands, and I ask that this group centers those original peoples and their homelands in your mind and in your actions. Smith College occupies Nonotuck, at the middle of the long river Kwenitekw—which is also where I am an uninvited, but grateful guest. I would like to recognize and thank Nonotuck kin—past, present, and future—for their stewardship of this land, its waters, and its persons. Although under different names, Nonotuck descendants have been and are still here. I give appreciation therefore, to our Abenaki and Wabanaki neighbors to our north, to Mohegan, Pequot, Narragansett to our south, to Nipmuc and Wampanoag peoples to our east, and to Mahican, Stockbridge, and Mohawk neighbors to our west. I’d like to encourage us all, especially settlers, to strive to be in good relation with all Indigenous peoples, to respect their sovereignty, histories, and dignity. Even as these acknowledgements have become more common, bringing with them perhaps a better sense of where we are and who we stand with, we also have to remember that these words are not spoken to memorialize but to call to action. In that spirit, I ask attendees to not only center themselves on Native lands, but also to begin understanding our roles in lifting up and honoring, or rather than erasing, Native peoples. Something as

Improved Land Acknowledgment

An indigenous land acknowledgement which was created in relationship with the tribes in the area which includes continued donation

Changed Mascot

Removal of the pioneer as Smith's mascot for the reasons mentioned above in Professor Mucher's land acknowledgement.

Native student recruitment

Recruitment of native students at schools that serve Native students.

Native Student Retention

Retention work to support and retain native students.

Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka Day

Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka (Angel Decora) Day, a day about the first indigenous graduate of Smith, and acknowledgement of the indigenous land where we learn.

Disability and Access Needs

Academic Accommodations

A clear plan of action for what to do if you professor is not meeting your accommodations, or is accommodating in a way that does not meet standards for reasonable accommodations. Additionally it should be simpler to get accommodations, and there should be a list of accommodations that they office can provide as a jumping off point.

Captions and screen readers

All video material needs to have captions, and all readings should be available in a format that a text to speech reader can process

Physical Access

All buildings need to have elevators and ramps, both houses and academic buildings. The setup of many rooms and hallways in both academic buildings and houses need to be wide enough and have clear enough walkways to accommodate wheelchairs and other mobility aids. All houses need to be disability accessible. If a building is not accessible construction needs to be begun as soon as possible (with a transparent timeline of when that will be) to make at the very least the first floor disability accessible. It is not only unfair to the current disabled students on campus that there are houses like Talbot (whose only wheelchair accessible entrance is to the basement, where there is no bathroom) that many of them cannot even enter, it is dangerous for the students who live in and love their house but could become disabled at any time and would have no way to even access their bedroom or living room. Houses in many cases can not be retrofitted with elevators, but there is no reason a house like Talbot should have two separate porches but no wheelchair ramp, lift, or accessible bathrooms inside.

Inclusive seating

Seating for plus-sized and fat students, an easy option is desks or seats without arms. Some places mentioned as being inaccessible are: Seelye desk/chairs, the desk chairs at the ground floor Neilson carrells, JMG.

Support for Disabled Students

Support and resources for disabled students beyond ODS way to find community with other disabled students by reviving the Disability Alliance, with administrative support and funding. More social events run by the ODS. Possibly support groups run by the Schacht Center, centered around different types of disability.

Accessibility and Accomodation Training

Required accessibility training for professors to help adapt to different types of learning styles to accommodate students who don't learn well with how they teach, multimodality and to be better informed on accommodations and accessibility in general. An example of this is if it's a small class then talking to students about what their needs might be, or maybe sending out a survey at the start of their class to get an idea of what their students might need.

Increased Mental Health support

Increased availability of therapist on campus especially BIPOC and queer trans informed therapists. BIPOC students should get priority with BIPOC therapists since there are fewer BIPOC therapists.

Policies on Slurs

Set clear policies for the use of slurs in classes and how to handle them in readings, when reading allowed and in foreign language classes This applies to not only the N word and racialized slurs, but also slurs against LGBT students and disabled students. An example of this might be Professors letting a class know that the reading uses slurs, and that they and students should simply skip the word when reading aloud.

Inclusion training with houses

Increased inclusion training and support within houses, both for organizations like student Reslife and HPA and HONS, but prepared by professional staff not students.

Accessible curriculum

Smith should work towards making the entire curriculum more accessible and manageable for all students. Professors often assign 100 pages of reading a class when in most cases they could assign a shorter alternative. These readings take hours, even an entire day for some, and put an unnecessary amount of stress on all students. Shorter readings would allow for deeper analysis and would level the playing field for students with reading-related disabilities.

Dawes

Dawes students have had their nutrition and food access limited this semester. The institution has expressed they have no plans to bring back our breakfast. We pay for 3 meals, so why are we only receiving two? This is an accessibility issue. Students with compromised digestive systems and allergens need as much food as they can get, and they’re choosing to take away chefs and meals to provide the other dining halls with more options. Dawes students demand the return of breakfast.

ODS support

I have a disability and while ODS has been great about it, there is only so much they can do being so understaffed and underpaid. Additionally, when I was an incoming first year, right after I got my room assignment I developed another disability and needed a change in room. But ODS was overwhelmed by emails and barely opening it’s office. It’s not ok for smith to disregard disabled students access to accommodations. Smith needs to expand its disabled services.

Ada Comstock Scholars

Name the Ada Houses

Name the Ada Comstock residences, perhaps after Ada Graduates

Increased funding and Support

Increased funding and support for Ada Comstock Scholars.

Mental Health

Crisis Counselors

Smith should make crisis counseling anonymous and should not allow counselors to send campus police to students in crisis. Students should not have the added stress and safety concerns of police being involved when they are going through an emotional crisis.

Mental Health Counseling

Smith should be able to offer enough mental health counseling & referrals to Northampton counseling for every student who is in need of therapy to be connected to someone whose services they can pay for. Currently Smith is not doing enough for mental health, addressing self harm and eating disorders, and suicide prevention. Smith is more than an academic institution because it promises to care for its students, and to live up to that promise it must meet the demand for mental health care.

GOT MORE TO ADD? SUBMIT DEMANDS HERE

I would love to collect as many stories as possible of injustices that have happened at Smith College, between students and other students, staff, faculty and administration. These experiences are not isolated events, and they are not experiences you should have to carry alone. I hope that this can be a space 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"