The Weaving Voices Open Mic night was held Friday, Nov. 15, in Graham Hall. The Weaving Voices project began in 2010 in order to create a space for students of color to voice their narratives that often deviate from dominant white perspectives in society and media.
Smith College is a predominantly white institution with students of color only representing 32.6% of the student population. The 2018-2019 CDC data for Smith College notes that there are 1,193 students reported as white and 344 students as nonresident aliens, which is the category for international students. Undocumented students were not mentioned in the data and do not count as nonresident aliens, due to being residents of the United States. No group of domestic minorities exceeded the number of nonresident aliens or reached a quarter of the amount of white students.
Students of color at Smith often face different struggles and difficulties on campus that do not affect white students as minorities in a predominantly white institution, such as feelings of alienation or tokenism. Smith students behind Weaving Voices created a space to “to celebrate and honor the labor and struggles that it takes to survive and thrive at Smith” through its Open Mic night for students of color.
Both Smith and Mount Holyoke students attended the Open Mic night. Attendees heard poems and anecdotes detailing the whiteness performers experience at Smith, different community cultures and dating. Despite the distance between the two colleges, students of color from different hometowns and backgrounds were able to share the similarities of their experiences.
Despite the sign-up sheet option on the board of Graham Hall, most students felt comfortable enough to simply walk down to the stage to share. The event created a casual atmosphere for students to speak and felt small and warm, despite the many seats in the lecture hall. The night even had a short dance break as intermission. The small stage and closeness between the performer and the audience made it easy for the two to be interchanged, blurring the line between performer and listener.
Examples of the performances included a monologue about the absurdity and differences in cultural reference points like overhearing a conversation between white students on creating a podcast dedicated to Dolly Parton, a poem on the treatment of young black children as adults in the eyes of white authority and some thoughts on being a person of color in Europe while studying abroad.
The Weaving Voices Open Mic night was funny, profound and demonstrated interesting and varied perspectives for students of color navigating through their time at Smith. At Smith, students of color often walk into a classroom and see that they are the only non-white student in the room or that the classroom is overwhelmingly white. Such experiences are alienating and yet still so commonplace. Spaces for non-white voices are an important necessity for the Smith campus and Smith must challenge itself to increase diversity among the student body.
A Weaving Voices event for senior monologues will be held in the spring for seniors to speak about their experiences at Smith. Students of color are encouraged to attend and participate.
