Assignment Due as You Return from Fall Break

I am interested in doing more work with Perry House. I feel like we did a lot of processing and action during the first half of the semester, but this is nowhere near the end. This is something I find myself very passionate about and that I feel like will really have an effect on our campus depending on its outcome. With that, I want to explore different ways work with the Perry House issue. Getting information out there and having people read it is important to me. I would hate for the Bryn Mawr apathy to catch on to the Perry House issue.

I also love the ideas that couldntthinkofanoriginalname has about Perry House. The freedom trail-esque project sounds like it could be something really awesome!

I'd also like to focus on Perry House. I fully support a campus-wide discussion about Perry. I'd also like to extend on that idea. I have been really interested in Perry's history beyond its institutional signifcance. I had the pleasure of having lunch with a Bryn Mawr Alum who adores Perry. She told me this great story about how she and her fellow Perry-residents found authentic documents from the slavery-era when they moved a book shelf in the Perry library. I am assuming the college still has them and I'd like to find out what the documents were, where they are now and how to make them a visible connection to Perry.

To be more specific, I want BMC to have a visual, and perhaps a permanent, reminder of the importance of Perry House and its historical/institutional significance because it is so easy to ignore the house since its at the far edge of campus. Perhaps a gallery of Perry's history? A monument on campus? Or perhaps a trail, kinda like the freedom trail, of significant Black/Latina Mawrters that leads from the center of campus to Perry?

Uninhibited, I fully support what you want to do! Lets deff make sure we invite alums to the discussion--they would have plenty to contribute.

Like Dan I think that what I am most interested is exposing others at Bryn Mawr to the complexities of privilege. However, I am particularly interested in discussing the variety of forms that privelege comes in. I think what is often neglected in the discussionon privilege is how we are all privileged in some way or another. This is not to say that while privileged we are not in some other way disenfranchised, but to think of ourselves or others as simply victims is to strip what little power we/they have. In terms of actism, I think it's funny how as students we often feel like we are powerless in the face of the larger institution that is Bryn Mawr, yet we are here on Serendip thinking of way to exercise the power that we do have. I think that anything we do shows how much privelge and power we do have, however little it may be. That being said, I think an interesting and fun thing to do might be to construct a mural here on campus. We might not be able to paint it on any building but if we get enough white paper we can get students involved in painting a mural that protrays and "discusses" privilege. 

When thinking about activism, I've found myself returning to the idea that this 360 experience is isolating – because it's so hard for people outside of our group to get a full understanding of what we've been doing. We spend so much time in our group of 17 (plus Anne, Barb, and Jody), that we've developed a kind of group consciousness on these topics of Silence, Voice, and Vision. In a desire to get away from being exclusionary, though, and share what we've learned with the broader community, I've been trying to figure out how we could replicate our class in a very condensed form for other students to participate in.

Barb recently told us during Visions class that, oftentimes, the only literature that is available to prisoners is trashy, insubstantial, romance novels. After hearing that, I did some researching and found that the most requested book in prison is actually the dictionary. With each of these points in mind, I would like my activism to take the form of a book drive/donation that would benefit local institutions. As a start, I want to see how my classmates feel about donating the books we used for this 360. We've talked about how, in prison education (when there are educational programs in prison), prisoners aren't being exposed to the larger-level structural problems that contributed to their incarceration. Providing them with books such as Colored Amazons would definitely help with providing this insight. I am hoping that this drive can be opened up to the entire campus (although I fear that people are more open to donate to poor girls from Africa [PEIA's book drive] than incarcerated men and women). I also know that many departments put out boxes of free books for anyone to take -- these could also be an option. If anyone knows where old/unwanted dictionaries can be found, I would really appreciate that information!

In addition to the possibility of the book drive/donation, I am also interested in cleaning up the graveyard in Morris Woods as per Anne's activism idea. 

**As an interesting side note, I have been writing my journals for Visions by hand in an attempt to only use mediums that the women we’ll be working will also have access too. My constant scribbling out is a clear reminder to me of how much I rely on spell check and how unnerving it is to be without. When I read the note about prisoners requesting dictionaries, it really made sense to me. You’re taken so much more seriously when your spelling and grammar are correct. This is something that I had taken for granted until now…

For my final project I would like to focus on the issue of ensuring that the tradition of Perry House remains an important administrative commitment and that we're given a timeline on when the house will be fixed. Not only did I live there one summer but I've also spent countless hours eating food at the Mujeres food demos, attending socials, meeting alumnae and going to parties. To me, Perry House is a symbol of how this institution thinks of it's black and Latina population and how it works to ensure that we are happy and healthy, and feel included and valued in this community. I will continue to advocate for the future of Perry House by meeting with students, faculty, alumnae, staff and administrators to figure out what is the best way to move forward in a timely matter.

For the final project, I would like to plan a discussion/open forum and invite the larger Bryn Mawr community to talk about Perry House and the experiences of black and Latina students on campus. Perhaps, at this event, we can come up with a list of goals that have specific action steps that the college should take (one of them being Perry but perhaps others like hiring more faculty of color). This is exciting to me for two reasons, one is what I mentioned before about Perry House having been an important part of how I made friends and felt welcomed at Bryn Mawr. The other is drawing from my thesis in not only identifying the issues that black and Latina students face on campus but also taking a proactive approach in making recommendations and expecting them to be met by the student body and the administration. I think that by working together we can improve all of our experiences on this campus and ensure not only that we're all thriving academically, but also that we're healthy and happy.