Last Friday, students at the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders (NCCWSL) filled the Nanticoke Room at the University of Maryland, College Park, excited to learn about the Women of Color Circle.
Chatter between attendees buzzed as we all waited for the presenters to start the workshop. University of Rochester administrators Valeria Sinclair-Chapman and Sasha Eloi, along with 2012 graduate Melika Butcher, opened the workshop with a dramatic dialogue. They said that in January 2011, a black student on their campus was killed by another black student at a white fraternity’s annual “Gangsta’s Paradise” party. This incident alarmed the campus community, but students like Butcher were even more upset when it was only viewed as a black community issue rather than a campuswide concern. Faculty, staff, and students of color looked for an outlet where they could safely voice their opinions. This is how the Women of Color Circle came to life.
The circle created a safe space that allowed students share their thoughts confidentially. Participants use the passing of a totem at meetings, which gives everyone the chance to speak when the object reaches them. During the workshop, we practiced our own circle. Passing around the totem, we introduced ourselves and our reasons for attending the session. Most of the women hoped to learn why these safe spaces were important, how they could implement them on their predominately white campuses, and how to address the challenges that they might face when forming a circle. Many white students who attended wanted to bridge the gaps among communities on their campuses.
I wanted to learn how to use the Women of Color Circle idea on my own campus, the University of Maryland, College Park, where I see issues among women of color and our lack of community. Often, there are cliques that separate us from one another, which makes it hard to have our voices heard as a community. Safe spaces for women of color would open up a new way for us to communicate and learn how to stick together to avoid these problems. I was recently initiated into Delta Sigma Theta, and through these safe spaces the sorority could promote discussion to address the campus issues that are relevant to us and help bridge the gaps within our own community.
After listening to the presenters explain the long road they took to create the Women of Color Circle and to keep it alive, workshop attendees left motivated and moved to go back to their campuses and work toward forming their own circles. As Eloi said during the presentation, “If we don’t say this out loud, we will suffer in silence.”
I, along with the other women leaders who were there that day, knew that we would no longer suffer and that we could use our voices to heal!
This post was written by AAUW Leadership Programs Intern Nzinga Shury.
AAUW Dialog 
Leave a Reply