It wasn’t long into my New School career when another student at a party referred to me as a mulatto. “I just love mulatto children,” she actually said, after learning I’m mixed race. She beamed, as if she had just bestowed some great compliment onto me. I was too stunned to know how to respond, and too stunned that no one else—especially my white friends—were able to muster any sort of words in my defense against my grinning assailant. But more important than being stunned, I was embarrassed. This fellow student, unaware of the history and derogatory nature of this word, showed me that being a person of color will always be exhausting, even at The New School.
According to data provided by the university, as of fall 2016, 28 percent of the school is comprised of students of color. Being a part of that 28 percent can be draining and often demoralizing when you are in classrooms with predominantly white students and faculty members, constantly being expected to put in work to educate them on your existence. Between the murder of black bodies at the hands of the police, the call for stricter immigration laws and the increase of violence against transgender people, specifically women of color, our existence is constantly being called into question.
It is because of this girl calling me a mulatto, and countless other incidents of microaggressions at this institution and the larger world, that I understand the necessity and the urgency in which students of color need a designated space for themselves on college campuses. The New School currently does not have one, and as a result, I, and all students of color, have no space away from those we constantly have to explain ourselves to and those who still have “mulatto” in their vocabulary.
Student organizers from Students Of Color Weekly, La XENTE, Autonomous South Asian Collective, Black Student Union, the Queer Collective and other campus groups, all have worked to create the campaign, Claiming Our Space. Our peers are rightfully demanding the university and administration create or find space for students of color and queer students in the upcoming Lang building renovations. There is also request for the university to follow through with promises made to expand and properly resource the Baldwin Rivera Boggs Social Justice Hub, which currently constitutes as open space and two small conference rooms on the fifth floor of the University Center.
Stephanie Browner, the dean of Lang, mentioned at a recent open forum with the Lang space planner that there’s a whole planning process that takes time, especially when the request is space. In December of 2014, President David Van Zandt sent out an email following the grand juries’ decision to not indict the police officers who killed both Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In that email, Van Zandt stated the university would continue to expand services and resources in the Social Justice Hub. With Browner’s statements regarding time, and Van Zandt’s promise to properly resource the existing open space, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that students of color feel unheard. The university at large isn’t meeting their needs and requests.
The New School “focuses on and engages with critical contemporary issues” and “prioritizes humanity and culture in designing systems and environments to improve the human condition, an approach that draws on design thinking and the liberal, creative, and performing arts,” according to its educational approach statement on the university’s website.
If The New School wants to be an institution that lives up to what they claim to be their educational approach, the administration and space planning committee should prioritize this issue.
A space for students of color to convene and work on projects is as important as sewing rooms are for fashion design students, and a newsroom for journalism students on the Free Press. I support all the campus groups who are actively working to demand the space that they need from a university that has made a name for itself on the ideas of social justice and progression. The New School and Eugene Lang College have the opportunity to truly be a model for what social justice can look like in an institution. I strongly urge that they follow through and provide what 28 percent of our community needs for their well-being.
Truman Ports, editor-in-chief
Illustration by Ashlie Juarbe
Truman is the Editor-in-Chief for The New School Free Press and a senior in the Journalism + Design program at Lang. He has also contributed online content for both Interview Magazine and V Magazine, talking with musicians, directors and a variety of other artists. Born in raised in Oakland, California, he now lives in Bed Stuy with a witchy roommate who is always down to burn some candles with him.
