Located past Elm Street tucked behind Cutter-Ziskind House, a warm white and canary yellow building known as the Davis Center houses Smith College’s Mwangi Cultural Center. This small space on campus is the primary hub hosting and running programming for students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). On an early weekday afternoon, the center can be quiet and calm with the only noise being the occasional distant laughter of a small group’s conversation. Whereas a weekend morning may be loud, crowded and energetic as affinity organizations move in and out of the kitchen, conference room and multipurpose spaces.
As of the 2021–2022 school year, Smith had a total of 2,566 enrolled undergraduate students, 33.9% identified as students of color, according to Smith College’s Office of Institutional Research.
“Having [designated spaces] for BIPOC is so important at a PWI [Predominantly White Institution] because, in most other parts of campus, BIPOC students can feel alone, othered and completely singled out among white peers,” said Emilia Tamayo ’23, a Bridge Leader, Smith’s pre-orientation program for domestic students of color.
Multicultural, affinity and Unity groups, an alliance of 11 cultural organizations, primarily turn to Mwangi to build and maintain their communities. Other experiences in the center range from weekly club meetings to late-night study sessions with friends. Beyond the limited special-interest housing options, Mwangi is Smith’s only designated space that centers the needs and experiences of the roughly 872 students who identify as people of color. But this raises the question, do BIPOC students have enough space?
15 Smith students, spanning from those in leadership positions to everyday BIPOC Smithies, were interviewed to discuss their relationship with spaces on campus. Additionally, approximately five administrative officials were interviewed.
The word “space” itself can be understood in multiple fashions.
Tida Dukuray ’25, a Black student, estimates 85% of her free time is spent hidden away in her room. Only comfortable in her personal space, she describes feelings of isolation beginning her first year and continuing into the second.
Expressing how she feels like “[we’re] second-class students.”
Dukuray summarizes her frustration by explaining that she feels students of color are institutionally unsupported. This can span from the lack of diverse faculty to an under-promoted cultural center. She argues that the label of “second-class student” is not self-imposed, but instead, put onto the BIPOC-identifying Smithie.
What Mwangi Means To BIPOC Smithies
Because most multicultural or affinity organizations meet in the Mwangi Center, Maria Delgado, a Latin American Student Organization member, reflects on how LASO’s use of the Mwangi Center encourages more participation in the Smith community as a whole.
Originally established in 1968 as the Afro-American Cultural Center, Mwangi has been around in some capacity for 54 years, but in the past 18 the center has undergone extensive changes.
L’Tanya Richmond, Dean of Multicultural Affairs at Smith, explains how as a result of student and alum advocacy in 2004, the center moved from the basement of Lilly Hall into the first floor of Davis center. However, despite the progress made in 2008, access was limited. The only way to enter the space was with an actual key, which few students held.
Mwangi Center has been made to feel more welcoming and warmer with better natural light, new furnishings and the capacity to host more students, resulting in the center becoming a more popular gathering spot for BIPOC students in recent years.
For Lexi Luckett ’23J, a student coordinator at Mwangi and a Bridge Leader, the Mwangi Center and the Bridge program created welcoming spaces on campus and gave her a better sense of belonging in her first year.
Luckett explains how many of her closest friends are from Bridge. She further reflects on how students come to Mwangi to do things they do not feel comfortable doing in their houses.
Associate Director of Multicultural Affairs Sahar Mahmood expressed similar thoughts. “Students are attracted to it because it is a safe space, they can be themselves. They can separate themselves from [institutional and academic pressure],” said Mahmood.
Understanding Safe Spaces
Quite aware of their positionality as people attending a PWI more generally, students of color at Smith overwhelmingly report feeling stuck, if not trapped. Many are dissatisfied and feel restricted by the mechanisms through which their grievances are acknowledged; a pendulum in a glass box unable to fully swing at risk of injuring itself.
Monica Martinez ’23, a Latiné student, says “it feels like people are still scared to talk about creating safe spaces … especially with white guilt, but it is important for everyone to talk about it. It should not be the work of students of color all the time to educate the rest of the student body … It is exhausting.”
For Jenny Huang ’24 and Anisha Jain ’25, who are members of Pan Asians In Action, along with Delgado and Richmond, a safe space is a place on campus where one feels comfortable, can be vulnerable and there is a sense of trust.
Huang, Jain and Nayelis Lopez ’24J from the Black Student Alliance and Advocacy for Equity Council agree that ideally, the aspects that create and establish a safe space for students on campus should be the same for both BIPOC and white students. However, in reality, Lopez explains this divergence: “[the spaces] already exist for a lot of white students … the houses are already set to be their spaces, this campus in general … where BIPOC students, in general, have had to carve out these spaces.”
“Wherever I go, I will be outnumbered,” says Ruth Kendall ’25, a Black student.
In being faced with this uncomfortable reality, Kendall turned to affinity housing for support. Smith College’s Office of Residence Life explains that special interest housing at Smith is meant to offer additional opportunities beyond the traditional residential experience. Park Annex and Parsons Annex aim to create an intentional community guided by shared values, goals and activities for students, whereas the other three out of five total options have other varying goals. Kendall currently lives in Parsons Annex, which primarily attracts Black-identifying students. She beams as she lists how Parsons Annex has acted as a place of refuge for her. She believes the house’s goal is to provide a safe space for Black students, and its personalized touches like the posting of motivating messages around the house help her find moments of ease in an often difficult environment.
The experience of living in affinity housing was described as euphoric by Kendall, an experience also shared by Marilyn Flores Santos ’25, a Latinè resident at Park Annex. Park Annex is the other identity-based house, which students consider to be Smith’s unofficial-official BIPOC house. Santos loves Park Annex. Her only problem with the house is not necessarily with the space itself.
“I do not get why POC housing is considered specialty housing,” Santos says before describing Smith’s housing process as an “injustice” entirely.
Santos believes BIPOC safe spaces should be a given right. Instead, there is disproportionate availability to demand. Data provided by Residence Life shows that since the 2020–2021 school year, the interest in specialty housing has grown. As of the 2022–2023 school year, affinity housing had 33 spaces available with 83 total applicants, resulting in 50 students being waitlisted.
Hopkins is another house primarily housing and attracting BIPOC students, although it is listed officially as a housing option for students with shared interest in sustainable cooking.
“About eight years ago, the residents of Hopkins House advocated for the creation of a residential space more welcoming to students of color. The hard work of those residents and others on campus laid the foundation for Smith’s current options for affinity housing,” Residence Life explains.
Em Kim ’25, an East Asian student and Hopkins resident, echoes Santos’ previous sentiments:
“Even though Smith is a small school, it can get really isolating really quickly … [Hopkins] is trying to be a space for not just residents but any students of color to really feel for one second that they are not in a majority white space … something that every student of color has the right to and deserves.”
Quoted earlier, Monica Martinez works to cultivate safe space for BIPOC students in the houses as a POCheese representative in Haven/Wesley. POCheese is a Smith-funded residential initiative in which house members of color congregate to share food, laughs and, most notably, space.
Although POCheese is funded by the college, it is reported that little guidance or support is offered by Smith. As a result, houses on campus sometimes forgo these events entirely. During her time living in Baldwin House in 2021, Raquel Garcia ’25, a co-author of this piece, recalls there being no POCheese.
Melanie Wells ’25 is now the president of Baldwin House and was happy to discuss developments made under her presidency.
“In the Fall of 2021, we did not have a house president or any previous community to build off,” Wells said. “The only two people who were interested in running POCheese were first years, and they were given no direction or resources from the college on how to run successful POCheese events. This year we have made a lot of progress … We have been having regular meetings, and I hope to continue an upward trend in future years.”
Reimagining the Future
The idea of a safe space has to be more malleable for BIPOC students on campus. Floyd Cheung, Vice President of the Office for Equity and Inclusion, explains how some people are comfortable wherever they go, which is a kind of privilege. As a result, students that are part of any minority identity often need more safe spaces.
Some affinity, multicultural and unity organization members express how they believe so much more can be happening in these BIPOC spaces.
Lopez explains how they do not think this reimagining happens very much in spaces like Mwangi because BIPOC and Mwangi struggle to simply exist at all. Lopez talks about how they are not sure exactly what is possible in the future, but historically, getting enough angry, tired BIPOC students in a room has always led to something great.
Administration officials like Richmond have been advocating for the expansion of the center, making the entire Davis building the Mwangi Multicultural Center. Students in affinity and multicultural organizations also share this desire as Huang expresses “we need a bigger space because there are so many of us.”
Administration officials like Cheung do recognize that “no institution like Smith was designed
for the diversity of faculty, staff and students that are here today, so we have to consistently reflect and improve.”
In that same sentiment, students of color should continue to work to bring reinterest and maintain interest in BIPOC-focused programs such as Bridge. Luckett explains how this past school year, they had to turn away incoming first-year applicants because there were not enough Bridge leaders.
The question of cultivating and maintaining a space for students of color on campus is complicated. Federally funded academic institutions cannot officially designate any space on campus for students of a particular population, but spaces like Mwangi can and do center the needs of the community of students of color on campus. The existence of spaces like Mwangi attests to BIPOC Smithies’ and allies’ efforts to achieve more racial equity, but there still needs to be more institutional support across campus. The spaces we currently have on campus are not enough; we can all collectively work to reimagine them, but we need more than what is currently being provided.
