https://pace.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=d1415d35-1b57-45c1-8c14-b0cf00fd33e6
Interview with Erin Mysogland, November 13th, 2023.
Erin: Yeah, I’m happy to do this, and I know it’s a great class, um and so, yeah when Dr. Iacullo-Bird reached out I was more than happy to do it.
Natalie: It’s a really cool project, and I love the idea of doing maybe more oral history projects in the future, hopefully, if this one goes well.
Erin: Mhm, yeah.
Natalie: So, could you just introduce yourself a little bit?
Erin: Yes! So, my name is Erin Mysogland, um, I use she/her pronouns. I am the Assistant Director at Pace New York City’s, um, Center for Community Action and Research, which is probably most relevant to the conversation. But I’m also an adjunct professor in, typically, most often peace and justice studies, but sometimes history, or women and gender studies as well. Would you like me to speak a little more about what my role entails?
Natalie: Yeah, absolutely!
Erin: Okay, so the Center for Community Action and Research (“CCAR”) is an office at Pace. We have one on each of the two undergraduate campuses, so I’m the staff member in our office here in New York. And we are charged with supporting civic engagement at Pace quite broadly. Some of that work is supporting civic engagement classes, so supporting these courses that are part of the core curriculum, um, where students do volunteering, advocacy, activism, in partnership with community-based organizations. So sometimes we work with the faculty teaching those courses, sometimes we work with the students, and sometimes both. And then beyond that, we also do more so student-facing programming, but we have attendees who are staff and faculty, and community members as well. Um, around civic, different, like, models of civic engagement, so sometimes group volunteering opportunities off-campus, sometimes like on-campus advocacy, or volunteering-based projects with a community organization. We do voter registration for all students, and we host events around current events, social justice, stuff like that.
Natalie: Where did you go for college and your post-graduate education?
Erin: Yeah, I went to Villanova University in Pennsylvania for undergraduate, and studied history, Spanish, and peace and justice studies. And then I went immediately to graduate school; it was like a dual-degree masters program, so I got one masters from Columbia University, and another masters, also in history, from the London School of Economics. So, kind of together it was like an international history graduate program.
Natalie: That’s really cool! So, what made you choose your career in education and activism?
Erin: Yeah, um, I think I always kinda wanted to be in education, but wasn’t quite sure, like, in what way? I do come from a family of, primarily women, who are educators. My mom, growing up, she was an elementary school teacher, and now she’s in middle school math; similar, but also very different from my job.
Natalie: Yeah [laughter].
Erin: My grandmother was a school counselor, etcetera. So, I was very aware of what working in a K-12 setting could look like. So in undergrad I considered being an education major, but I didn’t really like the sounds of not being able to continue to take, history and Spanish, is like what I most wanted to be doing, continuing to take those courses, and I didn’t like the idea of having to move those out of my schedule, cause I felt, like, this desire to continue to learn. And so I didn’t focus on education in undergrad, um, but I was very involved with kind of the equivalent CCAR office in my undergrad. It was a bit more traditional service-focused, cause we’re a Catholic institution, probably, but I was like a student leader with them for three years. And kind of at the end of college, it just kind of hit me one day, I was like “Wait, I’m not just, like, a student independently running this with my friends, there are staff here whose job it is to be doing this,” and so that was kind of in the back of my mind. I went to graduate school in history with the intention of seeing if I wanted to get a PhD in history, um, but I still had in the back of my mind these other jobs in higher education exist. And so, as I learned a bit more about what a PhD would entail, it didn’t feel like it super resonated with me 100% in that moment, so when I was finishing up graduate school, I applied to jobs mostly in, like, civic engagement offices, um, at like every university possible on the East Coast. [laughter]. And I ended up here at Pace, and so it was very much, kind of felt random, but now that I look back on it, it does make sense based on the spaces I was in and stuff like that.
Natalie: Yeah, so could you tell me a little bit about what your day-to-day role is like in CCAR?
Erin: Yes, um, everyday is different, but there are kind of similar people I’m working with every day. So, I come to the office everyday, I’m always with my student employees; we have eight, around eight, every semester who work with us. And so, they’ll either be doing office work for me, normally, like, prepping for upcoming events, stuff like that, or we’ll be hosting an event. And so, a lot of my day will be spent with students, both students I work really quite closely with, and kind of work more with them like fellow staff members, or students who are coming to our events, coming to our office for help finding a place to volunteer, help getting involved in advocacy, stuff like that. I do also spend a lot of time kind of liaising, for lack of a better word, with community organizations. This primarily happens kind of at the beginning of each semester, so over the summer I have a lot of meetings with local nonprofits to figure out what’s going ON with them right now, what are their current needs, and trying to think about how can we plug either individual Pace students in, plug classes in, connect them to student organizations. And then kind of during the semester, I kind of stay in touch with them over email or Zoom meetings, but it’s not as intensely focused on that. And then again, kind of, I’m starting to gear up towards going to organizations, meeting with folks, to get a sense of what their needs for support might be in the spring. And then I do work closely with staff and faculty here at the university, um, staff mostly in the context of, like, collaborating on events, and they maybe have a student looking to volunteer and they’ll refer them to me, stuff like that. And then faculty, mostly in the context of supporting their classes, but sometimes we’ll be meeting with a professor who’s going to speak at an event, or student staff, or something like that, as planning. It’s a lot of running around campus, not, like, sitting in my office all the time. My favorite part is we can go, when we do, go off-campus, so taking students to a volunteer placement, taking students to like an exhibit about social justice, stuff like that. Although those days can be, like, more tiring, they’re also the most meaningful and you kind of see the impact of what we’re doing. And also, personally I always get to learn something too, either from our students, from a community org., from a professional we’re meeting with, stuff like that.
Natalie: Nice! So, given how student and community-oriented all of your work is, when the Pandemic began, how was that to experience campus shutting down and everything going virtual?
Erin: Yeah, it was very confusing. It was my first year working at Pace that Covid hit. I had started my CCAR job over summer 2019, actually on the Pleasantville campus, and then my job opened up here in New York. And I live in the city, I know the community organizations better, so I transferred to New York just in January 2020. So, in many ways I felt very new, that was also my first semester teaching peace and justice studies here. And so, it all felt very brand new. So when campus started to shut down, and community organizations started to, like, pause their volunteering and stuff like that, it kind of felt like it compounded what was already still, like, a new thing I was navigating. The biggest thing at the time was that we were scheduled to do what was called “alternative spring break,” so our office used to run, um, a volunteering week-long like immersive volunteering experience for students over spring break. So, I was set to, um, bring a group of about ten, fifteen students from both campuses to the Jersey Shore, and we were gonna be learning about lasting recovery from Hurricane Sandy, um, having conversations about climate justice, and supporting local organizations. “SPP” was the name of them, rebuilding some homes that retained damage still from Hurricane Sandy back in 2021, um, and we, meaning me and other staff and the organization we were gonna be working with, came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be ethical to bring a group of students from a large city to a more isolated community, a smaller community. And this was before campus shut down, before the organization like completely shut down their volunteering, so it was on the little bit early side, um, but that was kind of like the first big thing we had to navigate in thinking about how was our work going to look different in the pandemic, and how to, like, think about this in an equitable way. And so our students, most of them were understandably disappointed, and I was definitely a little bit like “Ooh, I just spent like four months really intensely planning this for nothing,” but obviously in hindsight we definitely made the right decision, and it probably would’ve been closed a week later, forced to shut down by the university or the community organization, so I think it was good practice for me. And then the students when I talked to them about how we came to this conclusion and why, and I think it was still a learning experience. And then we continued to have to do that over the initial months, and kind of first year or two of Covid in general.
Natalie: So, in those first, like, two years of Covid, what were some other ways CCAR had to adapt their approaches to activism?
Erin: Yeah, um, so the other kind of immediate thing that happened was navigating civic engagement classes. So, some classes, like the one you’re in, students aren’t necessarily, like we’re doing this virtually, students aren’t necessarily going in-person, but for a lot of them, particularly at the time, and a bit now, students were doing hands-on work, like at a food pantry or a community garden, and they couldn’t do that anymore. And we had to think about how, but, students have to take a civic engagement course to graduate, and having been in one, they need to have done some sort of work related to civic engagement, and so we had to think about ways in which we could support the faculty, like figuring out what to do with their students. Some people, their projects were able to pivot online, some people had their own other civic engagement projects they could plug the students into, but we created kind of a list of other alternatives. We did some nonpartisan voter outreach, because the 2020 election was on the horizon, and so, like, writing letters to voters was something that we did. The census was coming up, so we had students make – this was kind of the early days of Tik Tok – so we had students making Tik Toks about, like, the importance of the census. So, we had to get a little creative, and perhaps stuff that wouldn’t necessarily normally be the core of a civic engagement class, making a Tik Tok, but we had to think about how we could still get the requirement done. And then, by the time the fall came, we had a much better sense from our community partners who had continued in-person volunteer needs that would be safe for students to participate in, who had pivoted some work virtually and wanted volunteers, and who didn’t need volunteers in this moment. And so, in the next, felt like kind of a year and a half, we were connecting students to a lot of virtual volunteering opportunities. So, some of that was, um, tutoring, mentoring, that was taking place virtually. There was a lot of letter writing, um, I became a little bit sick of letter writing. [laughter] It was a lot of making cards for food pantry patrons, mailing the cards; Food Bank for New York City, for example, had a great program. And then those would be distributed. So, it was kind of thinking about how to still foster community connections. Some orgs. were doing cool, kind of more so mutual aid work, that students were able to support doing some, like, coordination of neighborhoods, buildings even. Distributing groceries for an elderly neighbor, for example, stuff like that. And then we hosted some, like, virtual advocacy and volunteering events, so we would gather on Zoom and do a card-making project. We did Food Band for New York City, we did one with “DOROT,” who supports older adults in New York City who were particularly isolated during the pandemic. And then we did some like virtual advocacy too, we did an event on period poverty, where students contacted their elected officials about making menstrual products more affordable, specifically in connection with food pantries, schools, stuff like that. We did some virtual, like, “Get-out-the-vote” trainings, where students would gather and text their friend’s voting information and encourage folks to vote. There was also the challenge with all of that, there were some needs that came, like, the election, coordinating grocery delivery and stuff. But then, also grappling with the importance of not assuming what people need, and if an organization says they don’t need volunteers, like, trusting that and understanding that our impact in this time might’ve been staying home, not going places. And that’s a little bit different, and difficult to conceptualize in conversations with students, like how is our impact different, and how can’t we assume need ever, but particularly during Covid.
Natalie: That’s an interesting take-away from it, having to step back instead. So did you find it difficult at all to feel like you were able to stay connected with students and the Pace community?
Erin: Yeah, that was the biggest challenge. From the student perspective, um, we were hosting virtual events, we were getting a good amount of students; I think students who came to our events shared they were either there because they kind of were craving that connection, they were freshman trying to make friends over Zoom somehow, or their professors were encouraging them to attend, or whatever. All the same reasons why people attend events in person, but it was hard to build that connection, and I think when we’re thinking about volunteering, advocacy, activism, we’re thinking about community organizing as well, and how that’s tied in, strong community ties, and conceptualizing community both as like community within the university, and our university interacting with off-campus communities. So, it was hard to build connections between students that I think then are the foundation of being able to go off-campus and do meaningful community work. Somehow we did it, like some of my student staff met and worked together over Zoom for a year, and that’s the only way they had met, and when they came back to campus they were like roommates, and so little things like that did give me hope that people were making friendships, and I think for me that’s actually a big thing I think about when I think about the impact of my work. Cause thinking about, like, activism and community and volunteering as, like, a way of fostering belonging, so if students are coming out with a friend that’s actually a great indication for me that, like, we’re doing a good job. And then it was also hard to remain connected to community organizations, um, partly because their needs were changing so fast, what we could connect our students to and what we couldn’t was changing over the few semesters of Covid. And also, there was a lot of staff turnover, both here at Pace and in our department; we used to have two staff in our office, it was just one, it went down to just me quickly. And then there was a lot of new staff starting at non-profits. Some had had layoffs and reduced their staff, some had increased staff because their need was so high during Covid, and so it felt like a big transitional period also in terms of, like, the relationships I had built with folks at local organizations, and them shifting over, or maybe they had worked with another staff member at our office, and some information was lost as I became their contact, and stuff like that too, some logistical challenges.
Natalie: So, during the summer of 2020, besides Covid, we saw Black Lives Matter really amplify, so given your experience with activism and since you were living in the city, what was it like to witness all of that?
Erin: Yeah, I remember it being really intense, I remember feeling very all-consumed by it. Both in terms of personally, just not being able to tear myself away from the news, social media, um, but also it did become a massive focus personally of my work, but also of the department, and similar departments quite broadly. Um, yeah I was in, I was kind of half in New York, half with family in Connecticut during that time/ I was kind of in Connecticut that May and part of June, and then I came back to New York permanently from June on. And I did see, experience, participate in protests in both places, I think I attended more in-person stuff when I was in Connecticut, and then when I came back to New York, it was still very visible, and kind of integrated into a part of daily life. I knew, for example, not too far from where I live, where there was a daily vigil, kind of expecting to see it happening as I was walking home from the grocery store or something. And for me, it was very motivating, both personally and professionally, and I think in a way that is very much tied to, like, my career decisions. I was in undergrad in 2014 in the first iteration of Black Lives Matter, and it was my first year working in the CCAR-equivalent office. It was my first year just having, like, a racial justice analysis, and I remember it feeling very impactful in terms of academics, like what I wanted to study. I studied African American history throughout the rest of the time in undergraduate; like friendship wise, me and my friends were going to protests on-campus primarily. And so, that kind of all drove my earlier participation in an interest in racial justice organizing that I then carried into different ways. And so, in some ways in 2020, I felt like I was thinking a lot back to 2014 and my initial experiences. In terms of work, I was in a lot of conversations with staff and faculty about how to apply demands of Black Lives Matter to Pace. It was a really incredible time, in that I felt like a lot of arbitrary barriers that sometimes exist between, like, a tenured faculty member and either a staff member or an adjunct, were not really existing in that moment. And so, I was in a lot of meetings and virtual spaces with a ton of faculty, some I had worked with a little in the context of CCAR, but not that many. Um, we went to an academics for, like, black lives training, and then there were was, like, Pace groups checking in with each other in the interim. And then, I don’t remember the exact timing, but then the Black Student Union also issued their demands of the university, and so I met with a lot of staff. Primarily I most remember working with staff who are friends and colleagues from, like, the different DEI offices; Office of Multicultural Affairs, Sexual Interpersonal Wellness, I remember meeting with both those staff to think about how could our departments apply some of the demands to our work. Unfortunately, I can’t make all the decisions for the university, but there’s something you can do in every department, so, we did develop, I developed an anti-racism training plan in collaboration with both colleagues from Pace and outside, that now everyone in our department does. It’s like two kind of steps, there’s a first year and a second year, and so, um, staff are intended to do it, like full-time staff, and then students do it in their first two years of working at the office. So, there were some tangible things we tried to implement, um, in our department, kind of immediately, and then over the summer that was developed. And then thinking about, in terms of programming, how could we use our office in collaboration with other offices and student orgs as a platform for, like, then when we got back to campus in the fall, unpacking what was happening over the summer. I remember we did an event, for example, about calls to defund the police, and that being an abolitionist demand, and how that differs from police reform. And so, some kind of, like, teach-in type things, kind of unpacking our familiarity and understanding, both from, like, a practical and, like, an academic standpoint of some of the language that I was seeing over the summer at protests, and I’m sure students who were at protests or social media and stuff like that. That’s kind of random thoughts, but a few things that pop into my head first.
Natalie: No, that was great! Did you see any resistance on-campus to changing and kind of bettering the environment, given all of that?
Erin: Not really, um, I wasn’t particularly in spaces in which there would be resistance necessarily based on my department, the departments I work mostly closely with, weren’t necessarily…were very much in support of student demands. Both in a professional sense, like me thinking how can I apply this to our office, but then colleagues I was close with, helping black students draft their demands, and kind of more behind the scenes stuff as well. I remember in terms of like practical, on-the-ground stuff, I remember, for example, hearing that colleagues weren’t comfortable with Pace allowing NYPD, who was policing at local protests, to come on campus to use the bathroom – which is still a policy, you can still see that on-campus sometimes, so folks weren’t necessarily supportive of that. So, there were small practical things. Another thing that comes to mind when you ask that question is the anti-racism education courses that were developed out of the Black Student Union’s demands, and that’s one thing the faculty did really take – a lot of faculty took all the demands seriously – but that was one thing the faculty particularly knew they had power over, making that change. And I wasn’t one of the faculty leading the charge on this, but I was in communication with some folks who were, and my understanding was while there was a lot of support, and the courses passed on both campuses, and now it’s a thing, and students coming in have to take two to graduate. There were challenges in terms of very academic-y things, like some resistance around what does anti-racism mean, and do we need to come to a common definition, and stuff like that, um, more like boring, core debates about like can we just add a ton of classes to the core curriculum and stuff – I don’t know. Um, I wasn’t necessarily in those faculty council meetings or conversations, um, but that’s one example of an institutional change, that while it happened, it wasn’t necessarily smooth sailing the entire way. Yeah, and I’m sure there was resistance in many other ways, I don’t know if I necessarily am in spaces where there’s active vocal resistance, what I saw more, and still, is folks, whether students, staff, faculty, not necessarily thinking this applies to them, and so thinking that they’re already doing a good job, or there’s no need to, like, decolonize, diversify my syllabus, “We’re already doing that,” or “That’s actually not for my discipline,” or a staff member kind of thinking that they are not committing any microaggressions, they’re this perfect, “Not-at-all influenced by our racist society” being. Or a staff member thinking that they’re never gonna mess up on a student’s pronouns, and they don’t need to know how to navigate that, or something like that. So I think it’s, like, a lot of support of policies and stuff, but not always a willingness to apply that to yourself – and I’m sure I’m guilty of that of too, it’s something I’m very cognizant of and tried to work around, and I was like “Okay, our office already does volunteering, advocacy, activism,” I could’ve just been like, “Well that’s enough!” But I was like “Okay, we’re gonna do an anti-racism training every year, cause students are demanding it, and we can do it,” and that’s super important, and can make our work only better. So yeah, less open resistance, and more, just, lack of concern, or people thinking things aren’t universally applicable when they are.
Natalie: Yeah, so besides anti-racism education, were there any other ways that CCAR directly addressed the Black Lives Matter movement?
Erin: Yeah, um, we did do, we don’t do like events or anything over the summer, but I remember I had a great student Brittany working over the summer, doing our social media, and she was both like producing educational content – I remember we did a little thing, probably cause I’m trained in history, like the history of Juneteenth, for example. And then we would repost things like “know your rights” type graphics that were shared by organizations like the ACLU – like “Going to a protest: here’s how to keep yourself safe,” stuff like that. We were definitely very active sharing the BSU demands. There was like an SGA-DEI type position happening at the time, I don’t know. But sharing student stuff as well, um, so that was like happening over the summer. And I guess I was just in a lot of meetings; it was the busiest summer I’ve ever had, normally work is a little quieter over the summer. I was in a lot of trainings that I was, like, electing to participate in myself, and then a ton of meetings with staff, thinking about how can we apply this to our work come the fall. We did do events, come the fall, around different themes of the protest. We were also very consumed with the 2020 election then, and tried to do a lot of work connecting racial justice and voting, thinking about both like the historical connections between white supremacy and limitations on voting rights, but then also what different states had different policies, like in conversation where voting would be particular relevant in terms of racial justice. But then also thinking about, like, voting is not the be-all end-all, and thinking about this as one way to make a change, and how can we sit with students when they don’t think voting is not aligning with their advocacy and activism around Black Lives Matter, and how can we try to connect it when it feels helpful. But also sit with the fact that everyone is adults, and can make their own decisions about, like, ways to best make change. So, we were doing a lot of integrating the two, um, in kinda more so the language we were using in our outreach; so, when we would talk to a class about why might you want to vote, thinking about integrating their support for Black Lives Matter as one of the reasons why they might want to vote.
Natalie: So, um, voting obviously played a big role at that time because of the 2020 election, so I’m guessing it’s gonna play a bigger role with the 2024 election coming up too in the next year, now that we’re getting closer?
Erin: Yes, yes, we’re already getting ready for it, we already have students bursting into our office like “I need to make sure I’m registered for next year!” So, it’s definitely on the forefront of our minds. And in many ways, voting is one of the most tangible, and in that way, easiest parts of our work, because we just need to get a voter registration form in front of a student, and help them to fill that out. And then once they do that, we just need to make sure they know, like, when election day is, and where their polling place is, it’s all very concrete things. And in that way, I think I sometimes grow concerned that it’s like, it’s very…once you know how to do you…you know how to register someone and you always will, and I think what I’m trying to work really hard with my students on is thinking about, like, this isn’t voting, or volunteering, or advocacy – like how are we integrating all forms of our work. And so even though, like in 2020, voting was the main thing we were focusing on, and in the next year it will be too, um, how are we, like, talking about these things as like all larger parts of community, and community participation and stuff.
Natalie: So now that we’ve sort of moved past Covid a little bit, now that we’re in the third year, and we’re seeing different social issues, like trans rights, really come to the forefront of activism, where do you see your work with Pace, and just in your personal life, moving forward?
Erin: That’s a great question, I think my work at Pace is dually guided by what issues our students are concerned about and paying attention to, and what community organizations that want to work with Pace, what they are needing support with. And so, I’m always trying to particularly think about when I’m seeing exciting connections between the two. And so, I think trans rights is a great example. Obviously on-campus – or perhaps not obvious depending on who’s listening to this – on-campus, there are a ton of students who identify as queer or identify as allies, and are very much paying attention to news, particularly rollbacks of protections for trans, nonbinary, non-conforming people, particularly thinking about this happening in the context of schools, for example, around bathroom access, around sports, around pronouns, and stuff like that. And when we’re doing exercises with students, we sometimes have forms that say “Why do I vote,” and we’ll always, always get someone that says “trans rights.” Or if we say “What are you passionate about?” and articulate that on a button, or pick an event that you would want to come to, LGBTQ rights generally, and trans rights specifically, is definitely what’s always coming up for our students. And then excitingly, we are, I’m seeing more, organizations that we’ve already worked with integrating that into their work, um, but also thinking about queer-specific community spaces that, within the past few years I’ve been connected to, are looking to integrate Pace students in their community. One for example is named “Sage,” they’re a community organization – they’re national, but they have a large presence in New York, there’s a bunch of Sage centers in different boroughs, and they work with queer older adults, specifically. And for the past maybe like, year and a half, two years, they’ve been taking an enormous amount of Pace student volunteers. I refer Pace students to organizations everyday, and I don’t always hear feedback from students, but I hear enough feedback through classes, through professors, through the students themselves, through like friends and stuff, about what their experiences are like at the organizations, and this is by-far the one that I hear the most positive feedback about for both like ease, like “I can get enough hours,” and “The work is fine,” and stuff like that, but more so deeper things around like community building. There’s been a lot of intergenerational connections between queer students or allies on-campus, who are like very immersed in a queer-friendly society here on-campus maybe, and then finding that off-campus has been really exciting for students, they’ve shared. And then, also, this idea that there are…there is this 90-year-old that is queer, and kind of the possibilities that help to envision. So that’s definitely one where there’s been this great meshing between what our students want and what our partners want, and both seem to really be having a meaningful experience with these intergenerational connections. There’s some other ones, like other big justice issues around, um, reproductive justice has been a big thing – kind of always with students in our office, but particularly after the appeal of Roe v. Wade, and then immigration as well, and particularly with asylum seekers coming to New York. So that’s another example where I get a lot of organizations reaching out that do various things; some education organizations, some organizations that help folks apply for asylum, or legal-based, some housing, homelessness, kind of direct-service type organizations, food pantries – they’re all seeing an influx of asylum seekers, and expressing that as kind of driving their desire to host Pace volunteers kind of thing. And immigration is definitely something that students, like, consistently say is an issue they’re interested in, or interested in getting involved with, um, personally, obviously, that is interesting to me, kind of coming out of studying immigration history, teaching classes on immigration history, but then also that’s the kind of organizing I do in my personal life, and so thinking about exciting connections there, and yeah. But I think also the threat of all three of them are kind of like broader ideas about gender, race, bodily autonomy, independence, community, and I think kind of guided by thinking about things intersectionality, and so I think there’s always going to be different, like, justice issues coming up. But I definitely see our work as guided by my own analysis; as guided by student opinions, demands, analysis; as guided by community partner needs, as kind of increasingly intersectional. So, we’re not just helping older adults, we’re thinking about how is their gender, race, sexual identity coming at play to their needs as they get older, and that is an example. So, I think the issue is always ebb-and-flow over time; even this year, we’re talking about reproductive justice, just less than we were on-campus last year, like things develop over time. But I definitely see more intersectional analysis. And I guess also, with all of this, more connection on the part of students, really, to advocacy, activism, community organizing, than necessarily traditional community service, and with that, both like this broader view of how we can make a change in many ways, but also resistance to the idea of, like, saviorism and power dynamics that can come into play with community service. And even the word “service”; I try to use the word “volunteering,” I explain that to students in my class, students that work in my office, how can we even use language that doesn’t imply as much of a hierarchy, and I definitely see that in terms of student interest as well. Pace students vote at really high rates for example, and so thinking about impact that way. Um, yeah.
Natalie: Do you think labeling it as “civic engagement” rather than “community service” helps encourage that intersectionality, and avoid the saviorism a little bit?
Erin: I like to think so, um, we do do, like, a ton of University 101 presentations where we’re like “Civic engagement, what does that mean?” and kind of break it down into these different facets and not just focus on community service. And it can entail traditional community service, and that can be fine. In other ways, I fear the word “civic engagement” can…like, I think everyone knows what we mean when we say community service, or voting, or activism even maybe, and “civic engagement” I think is a term that, especially for incoming students, or people who haven’t necessarily been particularly civically engaged before, I worry that it’s not necessarily evident what that means. And I also worry about, particularly on the New York campus, we have a lot of international students, so how are we framing civic engagement as civic participation that doesn’t necessarily require citizenship – and so yes, it includes voting, but isn’t just voting, for example. I don’t know, I spend a lot of my day thinking about terms like “civic engagement,” and I think I tend to say, “civic engagement,” and then immediately go on to name the things that I’m talking about; and so, by that I mean volunteering, voting, advocacy, activism, all of that.
Natalie: Yeah, requires a little bit more explanation [laughter].
Erin: Yes.
Natalie: So my last question, really, is just, is there anything else about your experiences with Covid, and Black Lives Matter, and activism that we didn’t discuss and you’d like to share?
Erin: Um, in the context of work, I guess another big thing is Social Justice Week generally, and thinking about how that came out of really both Covid and racial justice organizing. Um, I was involved with Social Justice Week kind of from the start. I remember getting an email saying, like, “this idea has come up in Pleasantville and we’re looking for New York staff to help, would you be interested?” and I was like “Yes, I’d be happy to support,” like this definitely aligns with my values, what my job is here at Pace, and all of a sudden it was like “Great, you’re gonna be one of the two staff co-chairs to figure out how this week is gonna happen.” And I have a lot of fond memories of that first Social Justice Week endeavor, because of how closely tied to student and community organizing it felt. It wasn’t like a thing the powers that be at Pace necessarily decided they wanted to happen; they were supportive of it once it kind of came, but it came through student demands and alumni demands, and staff organizing, primarily staff who had either been at Pace as students, or at Pace already in 2010 when DJ Henry was shot and killed by a Pleasantville police officer. And, um, it felt very almost scrappy? Like we were determining how to better honor DJ Henry across all three campuses in a way that aligned with his family’s desires, but without staff who this was integrated into their job, without really any money, and without the in-person connection that could make a lot of this easier. It was very challenging, but I think it was also a great example of how institutional changes at a university can very much come from, like, the ground up. So now, this was its fourth year the past few weeks ago, um, so it’s expected, the university knows it’s happening, there’s more physical memorials on each campus, professors can sometimes plan their syllabus around it, a student organization plans to host a social-justice-related event during that week – it’s expected in some ways I think. But at that time, it wasn’t, so how did we get from this non-existing to being expected these years later, and kind of like real conversations around what do we mean by “social justice” in this context, and centering challenging white supremacy, centering anti-racism, as kind of like the primary goals of the week. And I appreciated the kind of directness of the language that we were allowed to use in some instances, um, to kind of, like, frame the week. I think there’s shortcomings with everything everywhere, including, like, anti-racism initiatives in university institutional settings. So the first week wasn’t perfect, no year since has been perfect, but um, it was certainly relevant to my Covid era, Black Lives Matter experience here at Pace, and is kind of like what I kind of often think about as, like, one of the main continued connections or through lines for me.
Natalie: And then it seems like Social Justice Week is gonna stick around, hopefully for a long time, even if it was just evolved during Covid?
Erin: Yeah, I think that’s the intention, is for it to be annual. It falls over DJ Henry’s birthday, so there’s like specific timing that it will always stay connected to. There were specific, um, conversations around “Would it coincide with his murder?”; “Would it coincide with his birthday?”; and thinking about celebration of life, also, as part of the intention, so there’s kind of specific timing. And yeah, now it’s getting integrated, um, like institutionally in a way that is easier for it to continue. So, student affairs, for example, has money set aside in its budget every year to pay students who help organize Social Justice Week and stuff like that, and so yeah, I think the intention is for it to continue. I would love for it to continue; I’d also love for it to stay kind of boundary-pushing, and pushing for, kind of challenging complacency, and pushing for connection to the original reasons for its demands, and um, those perspectives as well.
Natalie: Thank you so much, I feel like I learned a lot, especially about CCAR. I really appreciate you participating in this.
Erin: Of course, it was kind of fun! I loved this little tour, and it was a good reminder of meaningful experiences I’ve had here.
Natalie: Good! I’m glad you got that.
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