During my time at Wellesley, I had multiple conversations with other self-identified feminist (and/or womanist) students of color about how uncomfortable we felt in Wellesley’s flagship feminist organizations and spaces. I was often asked during my first year why I hadn’t joined a purposeful feminist organization since feminist activism was such a integral part of my identity as I entered Wellesley from high school. (Many of my fellow 2011ers know that I edited a feminist literary journal from ages 16-19, trained male allies for feminist causes and ran a feminist open mic in high school. For the rest of you, now you know.)

The honest answer is that I didn’t join feminist and pro-choice Wellesley organizations because I did not find them to be safe spaces for women of color. Wellesley prides itself on its “Safe Spaces” in their various capacities around campus. As an incoming first-year, I thought that the one guaranteed Safe Space would be the self-identified feminist organizations as we were at a womens’ college. I soon found through personal interactions, however, that this was not the case. In fact, other POC felt that these spaces were the least safe for POC. To that end, it should be noted that oftentimes members of these organizations did not consciously and/or knowingly make these organizations and spaces uncomfortable for myself and other POC on campus; rather, inherent structures perpetuated these problems.

Yet, there were times when members of these organizations actively engaged in activities that alienated POC. For example, commenting on Community threads about why they don’t understand the need for places like Harambee House or multicultural spaces and groups, or negative and presumptive comments about beneficiaries of affirmative action at Wellesley (for the record, Wellesley has no affirmative action policy), or not-so- privately discuss groups of people who SHOULD get abortions.

Yesterday, it dawned on me that many more of these conversations about alienation happened in private. I believe that if they had reached a public forum, the work of reconfiguring feminist organizations and spaces into safe spaces for all Wellesley students would have started earlier. During my time at Wellesley, members of these various feminist organizations would assert that they “reached out to women of color but none of them showed up.” To that, I think it would behoove each of these organizations to self-reflect and ask some honest questions about what they do to alienate students of color on campus. It is not a coincidence that most of those organizations are majority-white with just a handful of POC members, and it is wishful and naive thinking to believe otherwise.

I wrote about some of my experiences on my Twitter account last night, and got an overwhelming response from alums and current students of color who identified with the feelings of alienation*. Many of us had been the feminist during our time in high school (whether president of the feminist club, a pro-choice organizer, etc) and were excited to continue that work at Wellesley only to realize that those spaces were no longer comfortable for us. To that end, I think what I witnessed at Wellesley is also a microcosm of the wider problems in contemporary feminist organizations and movements.

Here are some concrete ways feminist organizations on campus alienated students of color. (Some of these experiences are my own, some are from other alums and current students):

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