One Final Assignment: This is your Seventeen-Years Moment, Celebrate it!

Posted on by

Written and Spoken by Professor LaToya T. Brackett

Podcast Version Click Here

Listen to this letter in audio form. Be sure to open in a new tab, to read along.

A Prelude: I love being a professor, at times I loathe being both a professor and an empath, and a trained counselor. I loathe it because I often pick up on things that many of my colleagues do not, or if they do, the intentionality of responding is not always there. I loathed seeing my students on virtual classes after our spring break. But mostly, I loathed seeing the removal of joy in my seniors. And as professors, we all did, I am sure. But at moments I would feel the depression they had, and their removal of excitement—excitement that had been building and worked towards for seventeen years, and some change. It was gone—almost. And I couldn’t allow that. So I sat down to write this letter to you all.

My Dearest Class of 2020,

The reality is… these are moments you will remember.

Since childhood you’ve thought about what college you would attend. What friends you would make. Wondering what you would major in. Places you would go for breaks. The type of freedom you would feel away from home. And most likely, you dreamed about what it would be like to walk across that stage, with your cap and gown, in front of your families and friends. The moment you knew would represent seventeen years of schooling, seventeen years of homework, seventeen years of being tested, seventeen years of new friendships, broken friendships, and forever friendships. Seventeen years of awesome teachers, teachers that did the best they could, teachers who changed your life, teachers you would like to forget, and teachers you can’t wait to tell, “I did it!” For many of you, college has been a part of your future since you knew what a future was.

Well guess what, that future is now.

Those seventeen years of yearning are coming to a close. Unfortunately, your culminating moment comes in a time of crisis, of uncertainty, of quarantine, of social distancing in a time where social over-exaggeration is THE requirement, you are in a pandemic—Covid-19. And this virus, that has no vaccine, or guaranteed cure, is out there removing your seventeen years of accumulated joy. And we have come to know that the only cure for this vaccine, is to have patience, perseverance, unknown health strength, and perhaps quite a bit of luck;

My Professorial last assignment to you, is CELEBRATE.

That’s right, I’m assigning you more homework. You thought you were finished. Well you’re not. I reserve the right to alter the syllabus at any time (professor humor, I know you might not be laughing). This assignment is required, it is not extra credit. Because this is a moment you will remember. I won’t allow any incompletes, because This. Is. The. Moment.

I know many universities are doing their best to prepare in-person graduation celebrations for the class of 2020 in the future—we still don’t know what the future looks like—so these celebrations (like the one at our university) are slated for a year after your original graduation date. And this is wonderful, it really is, and I hope all of you get to participate in that moment. But trust me, that moment, one year later, is not your Seventeen-Years moment. It will be a great moment indeed, but not like the one you are in right now. This pandemic-moment that you knocked out of your way to finalize those requirements for your college degree, is your Seventeen-Years-and-a-Pandemic moment. No one else has had a moment like this, and trust and believe no one has had a final semester/quarter of college like this. You are the novel graduation class of 2020 (sorry perhaps I shouldn’t use a pun so soon… but it is the truth). You spent seventeen years (and some of you, seventeen and some change, and you better know it doesn’t matter, the degree does), reaching for the same moment your friends from the class of 2019 had, your parents from the class of (they won’t tell you), because they showed you pictures or you joined in their pictures of their moment, and it was joyous. It was extreme social over-exaggeration, and they loved it and you yearned for one more year to get yours. Well, guess what, compared to their years, yours probably still feels like… To Be Determined…

My assignment to you is to be determined to make your moment positively memorable.

I remember my Seventeen-Years moment. I remember all of it. The good and the bad—but my bad came on suddenly with no warning, my bad couldn’t have been altered into an outlook of “damn, I finished those classes online, in quarantine, with uncertainty, and now I’m getting that paper. King, Kong ain’t got nothing on me,”—moment.

The reality is, I remember all of my graduations, high school, college, and graduate school. And the reality is, my moments were not so great. I did not always feel like some of the members of my family were there to cheer me on. At two of those graduations there were moments they proved my worries were right. I could tell you the torrid details of those moments, because guess what they are memorable, even more so, because they were in my Seventeen-Years-type of moments. But I won’t. I will tell you what I know to be true because of those sad memories.

I remember my joy before the unfortunate moments.

I remember my walk from the Arts quad, behind the Pan African flag with my friends to the field, where they told us to stand and move our tassel from one side to the other and we were thus graduated. I remember who I sat next to. I remember the people I greeted for the very last time ever. I remember trying so hard to find my best friends, but our Seventeen-Years moments were happening at the very same time and their Seventeen-Years moment cheerleaders socially overexaggerated around them. And I got pictures with each of them separately. But the day before we got one good picture before the amazing storms of celebration and joy that descended on our campus on the hill. I remember moments like this for my doctoral graduation as well, different type of level, different type of joy, but good memories. And for me, to still remember the great in those moments, when the bad still makes me wish for a do-over, means you can make your Seventeen-Years moment count too. And guess what, you already know what the worst aspect of it will be—all things covid-19.

I wanted a do-over of my moments, and there will never be one. I could attempt to put on my cap and gown today and walk across that stage, but all the energy that led up to when I earned my degrees, are no longer tingling and itching to get out. I worry that a year from now, my graduating students will no longer have that tingling and that itching, and walking across that stage will simply be protocol. And the reality is, the class of 2020 is beyond protocol. So, despite the reality that we must quarantine in your Seventeen-Years moment, be creative and celebrate like you never would have thought before.

We are all virtual now. That teacher from the 5th grade that told you how great you were at math, and gave you the confidence to fall in love with numbers and equations, can be at your virtual celebration. The professor that made you realize that you wanted to study something that you were excited about, can be there. Your grandparent who can’t travel anymore, can be there. Your friends from all over can pop in to say congratulations at any time. People you met on your study abroad to Ghana can be a witness too. So be creative.

I spoke about that tingling and itching you have right now to be finished with school, to have your university bequeath that you have met the requirements for your degree, and I wish to speak about it again. Don’t let go of it, not quite yet. Don’t let your worries about the world delete this feeling. Not until you’ve done the things that you always thought you’d be doing in celebration of this Seventeen-Years moment.

I’d like to share a story about one of you seniors. A senior told me she hadn’t taken any senior pictures. When I asked her for a picture to put up for our department’s virtual graduation celebration to recognize her, she felt she was falling short. She felt like, her picture she sent was not good enough for her graduation recognition moment. And that was an honest feeling. And I reminded her, this is the moment you have been waiting for, for a long time. She, like me is first generation, and she spoke about how her entire family was looking forward to her moment, because as many of us First Gens know, our success is a collective success. She was still living on campus while taking virtual classes, and I told her to go take her senior pictures. That’s right. I told her go get dressed up, and capture some memories. I suggested she ask one of her classmates in my course to help her—I knew just the right person with just the right amount of positivity in this uncertain time to make her senior pictures moment fun. And I told her, “no one is on campus, and no one will be looking at you funny as you pose—however you wish to pose.”

She took those pictures. She told me thank you. She told me her family was so excited to see her senior photos. She said it felt like she finally had a sense of closure on campus. 

I’m glad I gave her an assignment. I’m glad she embraced it. Because now I am embracing my role to share with the class of 2020, that this moment is memorable, and it will be remembered. How do you wish to remember it?

Assignment Title: Class of Covid-19

Assignment Prompt: You are the class of 2020, and in a decade or so you will probably be referred to as the Class of Covid-19. I hope you will embrace it, as it reiterates how amazing you truly are. But it is not yet a decade from now. For my students, May 17, 2020 was the date you were to participate in the official commencement ceremony on our campus. As of March 23, 2020, you found out that in-person commencement was postponed, and it will be held one year from now.

The first part of this assignment is to respond to the following questions:

  1. What were you most looking forward to for commencement?
  2. What things did you plan to do prior to commencement in preparation for it? (ex: buy a new outfit, get a fresh haircut, figure out how your hair would fit under that cap, buy a pair of shoes that your family could see from the stands, decorate your cap, send thank you cards to family, friends, professors, remind your family to purchase the cake that says “you did it!”, take senior pictures, grab a meal with your closest friends, send out invitations, look at yourself in the mirror and say “I made it.”)
  3. What things did you plan to do after your commencement ceremony? (ex: go out to dinner with family, have dessert, go to a party with friends, pack up all your stuff to move out, take pictures with your family, friends, and favorite professors, bask in the joy, shed a few tears at the bitter sweet, try not to worry about what’s next, experience the now.)

Secondly, now that you have responded to these questions, highlight the things you STILL CAN DO. Remember be creative. Enlist your family and friends for help. Brainstorm. Use all of those critical thinking skills you gained in your college career, and after seventeen years of homework, don’t let this one be late.

Congratulations to the unique, novel, resilient, determined, unapologetically celebratory, college class of 2020.

Sincerely,

Professor Brackett

P.S.

As a professor of African American studies, as a first generation student, as an African American woman, who never knew she’d be where she is today, as the graduate who worried about how her family would be able to afford the trip from Virginia to New York and later Michigan, as the sometimes three-job-having college student who worried how to afford my cap and gown, my new dress, my hair style, and the gas to drive myself back to Virginia, as the granddaughter of a grandparent who was incapable of walking from the stadium to north campus, as the black girl with a middle name she worried wouldn’t be pronounced correctly, as the First Gen who knew she would have to translate all the college speak for her family, as the dream and the hope of the slave, as the code switcher, as the girl who would tell people she graduated with honors from Cornell University and would often receive tones of congratulations that have the sound of surprise… It would be disrespectful of me to close out this letter without speaking for those often unheard.

I see you. I know that your future narratives from childhood don’t always look like what our society tells us it should. Your families may never have spoken about college. You may not have a family. Your seventeen years of schooling may not have looked like what our society defines as average, and this often means you are above average, but no one ever told you that. They told you something was wrong with you, they told you graduating from college probably wouldn’t happen. They said you would never make it. But you did. And this is why I get a tingling when I see you all, those often unseen, walk to commencement through our line of cheers as your proud professors. I get overly excited to see your joy. Your moment is most precious to me. So precious that I gladly wear my regalia each year, hat included, and sit as they read your names, and stay on campus until the tent of refreshments has no one left to refresh. I’m happy to hold the camera and get many photos of your entire crew in one image, or I’ll keep pushing the button until you captured the perfect graduation picture for all of your social media accounts. Because you won’t get this moment back. Because I know.

You are probably more likely qualified to survive this pandemic because your lives were required to have patience, perseverance, unknown health strength and some luck. Many of you ask yourself from time to time, why me? Why am I the one that got out? Why am I the one that made it?

I worry about whether you will be able to return to campus a year from now to participate in the commencement ceremony set to replace the one you are missing this month. I worry that your family can’t or won’t make it. I worry you will not want to return to a campus, a place, that you spent four years and maybe some change at, and still felt unheard and unseen.

Please for the often unheard, and often unseen, read between the lines, because I write this especially with us in mind. This is your Seventeen-Years moment, with seventeen years worth of doubts from others and yourself, and you made it. You made it. So celebrate it.

And it is you that made me say, I must write this. You won’t get this moment back. And you will always remember it. So make your Seventeen-Years moment positively memorable.

P.S.S.

Here’s a link to a celebration that showcases: This is how we do it.

https://www.facebook.com/TND/videos/284797529633597/?v=284797529633597

Citations Still Matter: For the credit and links to the Cap Designs, see list below, by number from top left to top right, and bottom left to bottom right.

1. Ancestors Cap 2. Dream & Vision 3. Chemistry 4. Si Se Pudo 5. Black Girl Magic 6. Ho’omau 7. Migrated 8. First Gen 9. Bball

Disappearing Act: The AFAM Class I Signed up for was Canceled, and Here’s Why

Posted on by

By Sofia McLaren

Last semester I decided to enroll in AFAM 375, Harlem Renaissance, however, before I could enroll the class was taken down and no longer being offered. The cancellation of classes was a phenomenon I had not experienced before signing up for a class in the African American studies program. I don’t think I even knew it was a possibility, but it seems that the resources in the program can’t always support the classes that professors would like to teach. I immediately mentioned it to Professor Renee Simms, a professor in the African American studies program as well as the English department. Professor Renee Simms explained to me that this kind of thing happened, that they had to delete a specific section of 101 as well because they didn’t have the resources to make it happen. I had other friends who were planning on taking the section of 101 and were also unable to do that. I was irritated, not only because this had happened to a class I wanted to take, but that it had happened in the African American Studies program specifically.

“The identity based programs continue to be the smallest programs on campus and because they are small they don’t get the title of department on the University campus.”

Why was it that I was only hearing about this happening in AFAM? I spoke with Professor Simms about the resources in the program and how the allocated resources are similar to the Gender and Queer Studies program (GQS) as well as Latino Studies. In these identity based programs there tends to be a greater need for and use of adjunct professors which changes the allocation of funds in the program and is an indication that these programs are in need of growth. The identity based programs continue to be the smallest programs on campus and because they are small they don’t get the title of department on the University campus.

“I discussed it with friends and no one else had experienced this in their prospective major departments.”

The deletion of classes was a new thing to me, but I couldn’t believe that I was only hearing about it in the African American Studies department. I discussed it with friends and no one else had experienced this in their prospective major departments. African American studies has had a rollercoaster of a ride at University of Puget Sound (UPS), being part of the curriculum in the 1970s and then being nonexistent from about 1978-1999. However, in the 1990s Dr. Nancy Bristow was hired in the history department and Dr. Hans Ostrom was hired in the English department, both saw the importance of African American Studies and it was approved as an area of study in 1994-1995. The minor first appeared in the bulletin in 1999. Although this was a victory for the field of study, the problem that remains today can be seen with professors housed in other departments helping to round out the African American Studies department or the other way around. An example of this today is Professor Renee Simms, who was hired in 2011, although she is listed as an associate professor in the African American Studies program, she is also a contributing faculty to the English department and works with the Center for Writing, Learning, and Teaching (CWLT), meaning less classes that can be taught in African American Studies. She was originally interviewed to be part of the english department and ended up being hired for the AFAM program and has enjoyed the focus she has been able to allocate to the black diaspora.

Professors have a set salary and that means that they are expected to teach 3 classes a semester, however, there are so many other things going on in the African American studies program, therefore, not all the professors have the opportunity to teach 3 classes within the program, or 3 classes at all. The program is dedicated to actively involving the community and contributing to the University in meaningful ways that they greatly enhance the University in other ways, besides teaching classes. Professor Simms is an example of this, she works in the CWLT as a faculty advisor, which gives her a course release. Course releases can be given for being a faculty advisor in a specific area, grants for research, directing projects, and various other reasons. Due to Professor Simms’ course release she teaches a 3:2 year, meaning she teaches 3 classes during the fall semester and only 2 during the spring semester. The course releases exist to give professors an opportunity to allocate time in other areas besides their classes, showing their dedication to bettering the University in multiple ways.

“The AFAM professors allocate great amounts of extra time to the University, investing in the future of this campus and the students that are enrolled here. It is time for the university to fully invest in the program.”

Dr. Dexter Gordon is another professor in the department with immense responsibilities and projects. He was hired in 2002 as the director and has remained the director of the African American Studies Program, director of the Race and Pedagogy Institute, and a professor in Communications Studies. These roles all take time and dedication and make it difficult for Professor Gordon to teach as many classes as other professors, therefore, he is given course releases for this extended service. The program has managed to stay grounded and in 2015 became designated as a major. The AFAM professors allocate great amounts of extra time to the University, investing in the future of this campus and the students that are enrolled here. It is time for the university to fully invest in the program. The investment in the community that the AFAM program works so hard on is one of the many reasons that the program is valuable. Community involvement is pivotal for getting ideas circulated and giving the University the right recognition. For the amount of investment the AFAM program puts into the University it is time to see the University investing in them.

“The lack of classes is exactly how programs disappear and the AFAM program needs to stay, it is a vital connection for this campus to the community.”

The designation of African American Studies as a major was a huge victory because it was, and still is the only major offered in African American Studies in the state of Washington. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to major in an area of study that I care about, however, I want to know why there is such a struggle to offer enough classes. The battle has become the ability to offer enough classes in the program so that students can achieve the major. Two years after the major was designated, the University hired Dr. LaToya Brackett, a 3-year visiting professor who has now interviewed for a tenure track position and been hired. This interview for a tenure track position came after years of proposals to the university, years of extra work. While these are great accomplishments, the fact remains that the department continues to cancel courses because they do not have the resources to teach them. The lack of classes is exactly how programs disappear and the AFAM program needs to stay, it is a vital connection for this campus to the community. As a community we can not let the program become invisible and slowly disappear, it is our job to make sure the program continues to get stronger.

Upon further questioning, I discovered that the professor who was going to teach the Harlem Renaissance course this semester was Dr. Juli McGruder who retired from the Occupational Therapy Program here at UPS. Dr. Juli McGruder would have been an adjunct professor and that costs more money for the program which is partly why the class was designated to be cancelled. Dr. McGruder did not study African American studies, however she has been very active within the program because, as Professor Simms said, she is “an independent scholar and has a love for Black literature and arts.” The decision for the teaching of the class by an adjunct professor was made by Juli Christoph, the Associate Dean, who also made the decision to cancel the class. According to Juli Christoph there are “usually quite a few (50-100) course additions, deletions, and corrections that happen in the month leading up to registration.”

“The interest and dedication in the program needs to continue to grow because that is the only way to ensure its permanence. The University needs to do their part in helping the AFAM program grow and continue to thrive on this campus, that does not include continuing a pattern of cancellation.”

Although they had found a professor to teach the class, they weren’t able to have a professor from the program teach the class. This shows that even with hiring a visiting professor, now a tenure track professor, the program is still in need of professors and needs to continue to grow in its capacity. In the words of Dr. Gordon, “The future of African American Studies depends, as it always has done, on the work of scholars, students, and communities of interest.” It is important that as a University community we recognize the areas of the institution that need support and relevance on a larger scale than is being offered now. The interest and dedication in the program needs to continue to grow because that is the only way to ensure its permanence. The University needs to do their part in helping the AFAM program grow and continue to thrive on this campus, that does not include continuing a pattern of cancellation. We as students also need to continue to advocate for the program and share the amazing experiences we’ve been given by being a part of the program and by taking the classes taught by incredibly engaging professors.

The Outsider’s View from Inside the Bubble

Posted on by

This piece is written with inspiration from Sandra Rosa Bryant’s work “Studying Abroad On My Own Campus,” featured in the Autumn 2012 Arches publication. After reading her piece, her experiences and those of her peers feeling excluded, isolated, and underappreciated led me to think of how similar my University of Puget Sound narrative is. This piece is written in solidarity to hers, and one that has led me to reflect on my own experience at the university. 

Link to Bryant’s article here: https://www.pugetsound.edu/files/pages/arches/arches_autumn_2012/files/assets/seo/page18.html

What is the University of Puget Sound to me?

When first applying for colleges, I wanted to go as far from Tacoma as the eye could see. It was the beginning of my senior year of high school, and I had just moved to the North End after being raised in South Tacoma the first 17 years of my life, where the University of Puget Sound was far from on my radar. In all honesty I only ended up here due to the scholarships I had been provided, and this was incentive enough to stay. As I have come to learn, being a black student at Puget Sound has been both my greatest learning experience and my greatest hardship. 


Who am I to Puget Sound?

I first noticed a feeling of duality at the end of my first year. I spent most of the time in my first two semesters doing what I had done throughout all of my schooling: being in every club, taking every subject I could fit in a schedule, and making friends in every place I could. However, when getting to college with this same mindset, I felt a heightened emotional exhaustion unlike any I had felt before. I couldn’t put in the same effort, or at least I didn’t feel that I could. No matter how much extra I did nothing was going to be enough for others, and in turn, enough for myself. I grew more and more tired, skipping meals and grabbing the extra coffees, and sitting in the Anderson/Langdon lounge from dusk to dawn doing any and everything to feel ahead because the feeling of accomplishment just wasn’t present. 

How did I realize I didn’t belong?

I went into my second year on campus ramping myself up to do better than I had before, even if what I did before was actually my “best”. I found myself in a rut. I hadn’t come to this realization however until I found myself taking my first AFAM class, an Introductory course to African American Studies with Dr. Brackett. Of course, being in the midst of internal conflict, I did not realize the ways I reflected the oppression I lived by being a black student on campus, and more importantly one trying to leave a mark everywhere I went. There was a single concept we studied that both enlightened and intimidated me: double-consciousness. 

W.E.B. DuBois coined the term double consciousness.** For me, in my own words and reality, double consciousness is my: Blackness, womanhood, and Americaness. My life is seen and controlled by several lenses: my own lens and the lenses of others.  Everything I do is approached from this dual perspective from being both within and outside the dominant group, resulting in an inner conflict and tension I must grapple with every day. 

W.E.B DuBois

How do I define double consciousness…and how does double consciousness look for me, here at Puget Sound?

Once I learned what I was feeling had a term and was quite common for African Americans, I found myself reassessing the way I valued my work, why I valued my work, and where these feelings of validation actually came from. Once I noticed I relied so heavily on the external validation, I found myself more cognisant of my success, and more so seeing that I was and always had spread myself too thin to appease others. In the wake of recent circumstances, going virtual has granted me time to look inside myself, but also to metabolize this new version of reality I have found myself to be living in. I am not nearly as critical to myself, and find I am much more ambitious than cautionary about the way I converse with others, take on projects, and even how I approach academia in general.

How do I continue to move forward with this realization?

Being at the halfway point of my undergraduate experience at the university, I am always expanding on my knowledge of how I shape the world for myself, and how it in turn shapes me, for better or worse. However, out of these lessons have come excess labor, pain, and the necessity for resilience. I find myself growing and strengthening in my knowledge, love, and acceptance of self through being here, but will always find myself wondering if the oppression I feel on a daily basis is worth these lessons. I often find that there is a sort of sadness when thinking between the things I want versus the things I am as a black student at Puget Sound. However, having the ability to learn where these disparities come from in and out of the classroom and living as an active force against a recurring storyline for many like myself is greater than anything a single university could grant me. 

**”It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” W.E.B DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

The 2020 Race & Pedagogy Institute’s Strategic Planning Summit: Reflections of a Student Attendee

Posted on by

By Eliza Tesch

On Saturday, March 7th I was able to attend the second day of the Race & Pedagogy Institute Strategic Planning Summit. I had previously attended the Race & Pedagogy National conference in fall of 2018 and I am a member of the Student Association for the Race & Pedagogy Institute, but I still wasn’t sure quite exactly what to expect from this event.

I had a great time at the Summit, and met former students and community members who were just as passionate about social justice and making tangible change in the world as I am, and exposed me to a whole wealth of information I was not aware of about activism opportunities outside of UPS, as well as the history of RPI and previous work that had been done.

Promotional Video about the
2018 Race & Pedagogy National Conference

The attendees of the event included several students and former students, the RPI leadership team, as well as community partners, some of whom traveled for an hour to be able to attend the event. The day I was there we went through learning, reflection, discussion about the current state of RPI, RPI’s vision and mission, and ideas for the future. We also listened to speakers, including the RPI leadership team, community members and Puget Sound students.

Our Strategic Planning Summits are pivotal in the Institute’s work as they serve as major sites where the Community Partners Forum, along with Puget Sound faculty, staff, and student partners and collaborating constituencies beyond the campus and Forum, come together to critically examine the direction of our work within a longer view. Within the context of University of Puget Sound’s new strategic plan, Leadership For a Changing World, this 2020 Summit will examine our achievements and their significance, alongside questions of what do we need to emphasize and re-imagine, and matters of capacity building and deeper embedding of the work of race and pedagogy.


Excerpt from the Invitation letter for the 2020 Planning Summit

Race and Pedagogy Institute Vision and Mission

“In our 18 years of sustained, focused, and collaborative work, the Race & Pedagogy Institute has staged a range of more than 20 summits and conferences, spawned an assortment of collaborations across academia and communities, provided a variety of educational resources for transformative pedagogy on the Puget Sound campus and beyond, brought together disparate communities to generate vigorous thinking about race equity and education, inspired a plethora of initiatives focused on the work of education and equity in both K-12 and higher education, and been one of the voices of change seeking to transform the landscape of education on our campus and beyond. All of this has been undertaken as part of our mission of educating teachers and students at all levels to think critically about race and to act to eliminate racism.” –Race & Pedagogy Website

As an attendee of this event, I had a several takeaways (in addition to my observation that the catered meals were delicious and far superior to SUB food). An event like this summit with two days of programming takes a huge amount of planning and energy to put on, and the quadrennial national conferences take YEARS to plan. What many people don’t realize, is that the leadership team of the Race & Pedagogy Institute is made up of a very small group of people who perform a very large volume of work, through the power of what seems to me to be sheer willpower.

The Race and Pedagogy Institute is an incredible organization that we are very lucky to have on our campus, and in my opinion is not given the recognition that it deserves. RPI has existed for 18 years, and has put on youth summits, the national conference, speaker series, and other important events that have been extremely beneficial to the Puget Sound community and beyond. I highly encourage anyone who is looking to get involved in social justice, specifically working towards a world without racism to get involved in RPI by joining the Student Association for the Race and Pedagogy Institute or attending community partner’s meetings.

For more information on The Race and Pedagogy Institute check out their website.

https://www.pugetsound.edu/rpi

Angela Weaver: Fine and Performing Arts Librarian

Posted on by

By Sofia McLaren

Angela Weaver is the Fine and Performing Arts Librarian at the University of Puget Sound (UPS) who was hired at the beginning of the 2019-2020 academic school year. On campus, she is in charge of library services for African American Studies, Art and Art History, Classics, Music, and Theatre Arts. She is also the only African American Librarian on the UPS campus making her arrival here very significant. I had the privilege of interviewing Angela Weaver about her life before UPS and while at UPS so far, as well as the things she enjoys outside of her professional environment.

When I asked Angela if she had always wanted to be a librarian she laughed and told me that, when she began her academic journey, she didn’t know that she was going to be a librarian. She went to undergrad at Duke University in North Carolina and majored in Psychology with a minor in English, thinking that she would become a psychologist. However, during her four years at Duke she worked in the library. When she graduated, she was still working in the library and decided to go to library school, but actually ended up going to graduate school at the University of California in San Diego for play writing, another passion of hers. However, with a practical mindset she knew as soon as she graduated that she would go to library school instead of struggling to make a living through playwriting. Library school at Rutgers University in New Jersey would allow her to combine her love for libraries and drama by becoming a drama librarian. New Jersey was a strategic move on her part, allowing her to intern in New York City, “Theatre central.” Her dream job in the beginning was becoming an archivist for the New York Public Library (NYPL) for the performing arts, where she interned during library school. During the highlight of her internship at NYPL, she had the opportunity to process an archival collection belonging to a playwright and screenwriter who wrote for the Marx brothers movies and also testified during the House Un-American Activities trials.

Despite her idea of being an archivist, she ended up becoming a research librarian and working for different universities, always with a concentration in the performing arts. The first university that Angela worked for was the University of Mississippi in Oxford Mississippi, “where there is nothing else except for the University of Mississippi and William Faulkner’s House,” according to Angela. Preceding her time at UPS, she was the head of the drama and art libraries at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle starting in 2004. The commute from Tacoma to Seattle was a “nightmare” compared to what it had been when she lived in Federal Way. Luckily, she was able to give up the long commute by coming to UPS. She heard about the job at UPS because the head of the UPS Library, Jane Carlin, sent her an email asking if she knew any grad students who were graduating and would be interested in the job. Angela responded saying, “I don’t know any grad students, but me! I live in Tacoma, this would be great.” She wasn’t looking for a job, but this one came right to her, and she couldn’t pass up the offer. Her commute went from 2 and a half hours a day to about 20 minutes a day, she told me, laughing. 

I asked Angela about the differences that she has noticed from working at a larger, public institution and now working at a smaller, liberal arts university. One of the first things that stood out to her was that, despite the fact that she was the head of two different department libraries and in the buildings that housed others working for the department, she, “still had met more people here at UPS than at UW,” within a week of arriving on campus. After a week of being at UPS, she had met all of the Classics professors who were on campus for the fall semester, a number of the music faculty, at least two of the African American Studies (AFAM) professors, as well as faculty in the Art department. Angela was shocked that within a month she had met a significant amount of faculty, as well as students, and she had not simply met students once, but had been able to recognize them in multiple different settings. She remarked about how, at UW, there were so many students, “even the ones in drama that [she] saw more often, [she] could remember their faces but didn’t remember their names because there were so many and [she] didn’t really get to talk to them.” She talked to me about how she admires the level of engagement here. It’s, “better because it’s so much smaller and [the librarians] are so much more involved with the classes.” 

With the level of engagement being different, there have had to be some adjustments from how Angela was used to doing things at UW; she teaches a lot more classes at UPS and is more involved on a class level. While working at UW, she was used to only teaching about two to three classes each year, and at UPS she teaches about 15 or 16 per semester. She has really enjoyed working with students individually on their projects and getting to delve deeper into topics that students are excited about. 

Angela has also been pleasantly surprised at how much she has enjoyed working with the Music department. Having no training as a music librarian and not being a musician herself, she was slightly nervous about having to work with the Music department and the prospect of disappointing them since she had no background in music. In the interview she said with a smile, “I like music, but I’ve never studied music.” However, she followed that up by saying that working with the music classes has been really fun, and that the students have had some really unique and interesting projects. Angela has particularly enjoyed working with the newly hired ethnomusicologist, Dr. Ameera Nimjee and her classes such as World Music and Women in Music. Recently, Angela helped teach a podcasting class, showing them how to create podcasts that incorporate the research they had done. Another professor, Dr. Gwynne Brown, focused on American Spiritual Music, which Angela also had a lot of fun with. She talked about what a welcome surprise it was to go in and discover the creativity surrounding projects, stating that, “they [the students] have really interesting topics and that it’s not just Beethoven, Bach, or Brahms, but music that [she] actually know[s] something about and enjoy[s].” Many of the projects touched on other interests of hers, such as playwriting, because some students were tasked with writing their own plays and pieces of music instead of just writing a paper.

Angela has gotten involved in other ways on campus, besides her role in the library. She reached out to Ellen Peters, the Associate Provost for Institutional Research and Uchenna Baker, the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, to talk about student retention on campus after having read the report that UPS sent out. Angela was disheartened that there were so many students who don’t feel like they belonged at UPS, and Angela said, “being a student of color who went to a private, predominantly white university, I kind of understood how they feel,” even though her own experience had been much different because she had found a sense of belonging at Duke. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that sent us all off campus, Angela got involved with a group called the Student of Color Community Initiative (SOCCI), a task force trying to establish first-year housing for students of color. Unfortunately she was only able to attend one meeting before Spring Break and the switch to online school, but she is hoping they will reconvene in the summer or fall to think about their next steps. Angela was really grateful for the opportunity to work with undergraduate students Christina Mills ‘22, Becca Lumbantobing ‘21, Mara Henderson ‘20, and Colin Noble ‘19 on this initiative that they had worked so hard to create. She raved about the, “incredible 20 plus page report,” that they had written to go along with the initiative they created.

As I continued to talk with Angela about her time at UPS, I was interested in discovering how accepted Angela has felt on the UPS campus and in the library being the first and only African American librarian at UPS. She responded saying that, “librarianship is a pretty liberal profession full of mostly women,” so she has felt accepted. However, she did tell me that, “the profession as a whole has a problem attracting librarians from underrepresented groups,” something of which I was completely unaware. As a result, Angela herself has been involved in programs and leadership institutes for librarians from underrepresented groups and is currently mentoring a grad student who is a member of an underrepresented group as part of a program. She laughed and told me that, “librarianship as a whole has been trying to improve its diversity because it knows it has a problem.” Therefore, she explained that everywhere she has gone as a librarian it’s been a similar situation, with one or two African American librarians. She noted that, when she arrived on campus at UW there was one African American librarian, but when she left there were several more who had been added to the team. Again, she emphasized that it is always that way in libraries, assuring me that, “UPS is not unique in that way.” Angela Weaver is well practiced in the art of, “coming in and being like, ok I’m here!” She also told me that, surprisingly, the University of Mississippi was the place she has been with the most diversity. 

  • Lynn Nottage
  • Caryl Churchill
  • Suzan-Lori Parks

Closing out the interview, I asked Angela about some of her favorite things and favorite pastimes. When I asked about her favorite play, she said, “it changes all the time,” and instead listed her favorite playwrights: Suzan-Lori Parks, Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Jose Rivera, and Lynn Nottage. She also shared with me that she used to run a group called Women of Color, Women of Words, as well as head a website as a graduate student project while at Rutgers. Angela graduated from graduate school in 1996, right as the internet was just starting. She had a class on creating websites, and she decided to create a website dedicated to female playwrights of color. The website included, “different biographical information about the playwrights, their plays, where to find them, how to purchase copies, which anthologies had their works, and critical resources around the different plays.” The website is no longer active, but while it was still up and running, many professors had reached out about how helpful the site had been while teaching their students because there hadn’t been as many resources as there are now when it came to learning about diverse women playwrights. The e-group that she started still exists on yahoo, but is not very active today, however during its active time even Lynn Nottage, one of Angela’s favorite playwrights, had joined the group.  

Now, Angela Weaver is working from home like many of us, but she is still busy teaching classes and attending meetings. However, she is also passing the time by listening to lots of Prince and doing Christmas crafts because she starts early and has a theme for each year. She jokingly told me that she, “will be finished with Christmas this year by the end of summer.” She makes Putz houses, which used to be very popular in the 50’s, and her theme for Christmas this year is vintage, while last year’s theme was Marie Antoinette, and a past year was 1960’s modern Christmas. The Putz houses are made from paper and cardboard, and she has made about 4 so far using 50’s architecture. Angela is a wonderfully creative and intelligent woman and an extremely valuable member of the UPS community. We are very grateful she has felt welcome by and happy with the interactions she’s had and the projects she’s been a part of while at UPS.