Recently, I attended the annual Vermont Women’s summit as co-president of the Feminist Club at Saint Michael’s College. I went with other members of the Feminist Club as well as with members of the Diversity Coalition and the Coordinator of the Center for Women & Gender. The panel and theme of the summit pertained to the concern of intersectionality, or how women of color experience levels of intersecting oppressions through misogyny and racism. Though the topic of Intersectionality was formally introduced by feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins in 1986, it hasn’t been a significant topic of conversation outside of academia until somewhat recently.

The primary distinguished speaker at the summit was Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a black feminist scholar who was the first to develop a Women’s Research and Resource Center, the first of its kind for any historically black college (Spelman College in 1981). Hearing Dr. Guy-Sheftall speak about intersectionality was an unbelievably powerful and uplifting, and I wanted to be able to translate what we learned about strategies of discussing intersectionality and bring those ideas to Saint Michael’s College. Though Vermont is statistically one of the least ethnically diverse states in the country, that means that intersectionality falls under the radar in this state as we are less aware of our cultural surroundings. That being said, schools like Winooski have more than 50% of the student population speaking a language other than English as their primary language. From an educational standpoint, this made me question what ways our college and surrounding community handle the concept of intersecting oppressions and how we mediate such oppressions.

To provide myself with a greater frame of reference beyond my Race, Gender, & Sexuality Seminar and my Feminist Political Thought Course, I utilized the reading of “Deepening Social Justice,” by Christine E. Sleeter. One of the focal points that Sleeter addresses in being able to form reciprocal relationships with other stakeholders, and I wanted to develop a panel of scholars and students to discuss the issue of intersectionality on our campus and our community. In order to do this properly and ethically, I am in the process of reaching out to the Center for Multicultural Student Affairs, MLK Society, Diversity Coalition, and Common Ground (the LGBTQ organization on campus). I am hoping for wide reaching equitable collaboration from these pertinent clubs and organizations on campus to create an event where students learn more about the types of prejudices that people are exposed to, and how we can strive to remedy these prejudices against fellow students and community members.
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Moving forward, I plan on finding common meeting times where representatives from these clubs can meet together so we are able to develop the details of these speakers and what exactly we would like this event to look like.

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While acting as the Student Representative for the MA Board of Elementary & Secondary Education (BESE) I was also the Chairperson for the State Student Advisory Council, which is a group of 44 high school students from across the Commonwealth who represent regional concerns regarding education and school climate. We all worked together to determine what issues were most pressing within our schools and we would annually report out to the BESE. A school culture issue that we all felt was pertinent to our lives was the concern of not having a voice in educator evaluations. It did not seem entirely fair to rate the success of an educator without even considering what students had to say about their teachers.

At this juncture, we needed to convince the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) that this was a worthwhile endeavor to pursue. DESE had formed an educator evaluation committee and we sought to propose our idea of incorporating student input for assessing the quality of teachers. The committee wasn’t entirely hesitant to our proposal where we wanted a mix of quantitative and qualitative responses to ensure that we could bypass students who were intentionally going to rate teachers as poorly as possible (though I had skepticism that students would really do this, I also acknowledged this as an essential compromise to prove that we were willing to demonstrate that we had taken a level of diligence in our recommendation). The committee did not want the students to determine whether or not a teacher could lose their job or be put on probation for student feedback. As a compromise between both stakeholders, we recommended that we create a student impact rating as a process for the educator evaluation model being developed. The student impact rating would not be able to push a teacher into an improvement plan or a plan created by the school administrators, but it could impact whether or not an educator had to make a self directed improvement plan on an annual basis, or they would have to make a plan every other year. If an educator receive a moderate or high student impact rating, they would be allowed to only have to make a plan every other year, but if the student impact rating was low for a teacher, despite meeting every other metric, they would still have to make a self directed plan annually to show they are committed to boosting student impact within the class. The details on this educator evaluation plan can be seen HERE. Despite some compromises, this was a huge milestone for students in America, as this was the first ever educator evaluation model that actually included student input. We were successful in ensuring that students would feel like their voice matters within their schools, and this would ultimately bolster a greater level of morale and quality of life within our schools.
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In the future, I want to make sure that when I am developing or researching policy, I am always listening to the voices of students, and I want to ensure there is a manner in which student voices can be heard clearly. This can be achieved in advocating for the importance of student representation in education and lobbying to establish student advisory councils youth legislative advisory councils that annually report out to state agencies. This is still an endeavor I have been pursuing for the last 6 years, and I don’t plan on ceasing. In fact, I just submitted another policy recommendation paper to the Roosevelt Institute which I hope will be published. At this point, this is my 27th revision for this research.

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Over the course of the last two months, there has been unease, confusion, and concern in regards to the future of the Center for Women & Gender at Saint Michael’s College. This concern derives from recent budget cuts and a reduction of trained staff members at the Center for Women & Gender (CWG), where hours of support time have been drastically reduced for students who want or need a space to confide with a trained coordinator to talk about sexual assault. Additionally, the CWG acted as a haven for women of color, and the LGBTQ+ community as the Center embodied a safe and inclusive space for all students. With the dwindling resources for the CWG, the efforts to ensure this center will remain a testament to an inclusive community is being stymied.
    As someone who has been a representative for Feminists for Equality for the last four years, and is now currently serving as Co-President, I am disappointed in my school for eliminating a staff member who had experience in helping students who have experienced sexual trauma, or students who feel isolated due to their identity. We lost an excellent coordinator who worked arduously to make our community more safe and strong, and many students on campus feel like their experiences are being invalidated with this untimely departure of staff for the CWG.
    I have been working closely with fellow students on campus to create an action plan to ensure that our voices are heard by the administration. Through this action, our goal is to achieve a safer learning environment for all students, but particularly women, women of color, and the LGBTQ+ community, as they are the highest risk of experiencing discrimination or an unsafe learning environment. We have been acting in a manner to engage as many people on campus as possible through collaboration and vocalizing our concerns. Currently, I chaired a committee to write a community op-ed for The Defender (our campus newspaper) which discusses the necessity of having trained coordinators and staff members at the CWG, as well as presenting possible solutions for the school to consider (the link to letter can be found HERE). We have also created a committee of students who are organizing a tea party with some of the Board of Trustees members to openly discuss what the CWG means to them. The goal of this tea party is not meant to be antagonizing, but to initiate a dialog with some of the Board of Trustees members, because it is a rare occasion that students and BOT members get to interact.
    We hope that by the end of this year that Feminists for Equality, and current members of the CWG will be able to have completed an action plan to reinstate trained staff members and coordinators to ensure that all students on campus will have a safe place to go and confide to if they feel isolated or have experienced sexual violence.

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This is the fourth installment of Students as Stakeholders, which focuses on special education and inclusion, and how we can work towards engaging all students in extracurricular organizations. For those that are interested in the transcript and the resources we utilized, please follow this link HERE

Reference: Vermont Ed Leadership Standards