Cultural Resource Centers: A Decades-long Battle

by Anonymous

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Penn has a history of cultivating an unsafe, and even aggressive, environment for gender minorities, non-white individuals, FGLI students, disabled students and staff, members of the queer community, and others that don’t fit their rich, white, cis-het blueprint. Over time, these marginalized students and staff formed their own communities on campus and advocated for formal recognition from the University of Pennsylvania. These are their stories.

Penn Women’s Center

In April 1973, student protestors occupied College Hall for four days in response to a series of on-campus rapes. Their sit-in prompted the founding of the Penn Women’s Center, which is currently located at 3643 Locust Walk and serves as a haven for members of all marginalized gender identities. After a two-year search for a new director, Penn appointed Elisa Foster as the new permanent director of the PWC in April of 2023.

The LGBT Resource Center

The LGBT center was created in 1982 following violent homophobic attacks on-campus. The original support group was led by founding director Bob Schoenberg (with assistance from work-study students) and was located in Houston Hall. In 2000, following a large donation by alumni David Goodhand and Vincent Griski, President Rodin announced the full renovation of the 1870s Carriage House to expand the program, thus establishing the nation’s second oldest LGBTQ+ resource center. In March 2023, ALOK was announced as the first LGBTQ+ Scholar in Residence at Penn and in the country.

Greenfield Intercultural Center

The Greenfield Intercultural Center (GIC) officially opened in 1984, following years of development and support from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation. The then-Chair of the United Minorities Council (UMC), Jin Sung Pak, promised that the center would not go underused, and the founding director, Rene Gonzalez, quickly began working on programs to support minority students at Penn and combat institutionalized racism at the university. The GIC evolved into an all-purpose space for minority groups at Penn. 

The Greenfield Intercultural Center on 37th and Chestnut streets. Photo courtesy of University of Pennsylvanian.

The ARCH Centers

Penn owes the existence of its Cultural Resource Centers (CRCs) to Black, brown, and Asian students and staff. Several individuals often go unrecognized in Penn’s own accounts of the University’s history. These figures primarily include GIC staff members, such as Burrell-Mcrae who was Associate Director at GIC before her full transition to Director of Makuu, the Black student cultural center, in 2001. Alongside Makuu, GIC leadership proposed an increase in funding to hire two full-time coordinators for the AAPI and Latinx students.

Yen Ling Shek (hired in 2000) became the coordinator for AAPI students. Splitting her time between GIC and the then-forming Pan Asian American Community House (PAACH), Yen Ling worked with student leaders to establish programs such as the PEER mentorship program and the Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative. Her counterpart at La Casa Latina, the Latinx student resource center, was Rubi Pacheco-Rivera, who was hired in 1999 when Latinx students were boycotting GIC to get their own space. La Casa Latina became the first of the three CRCs located in the ARCH building. Her work led to the creation of much of La Casa’s foundation, including many Latinx Heritage Month events hosted on-campus. 

In 1999, members of the Asian American Student Coalition (APSC), including their chair Eric Lee, rallied on the College Green in an event they called “SPEAKOUT!” to push for a devoted resource center for Asian American students. Following the student protests, Penn’s administration decided to move forward with creating cultural houses for several minority groups on campus. Their home became the Arts, Research, and Culture House (ARCH), and the first recorded directors of the three cultural houses were Ajay Nair (PAACH), Anamaria Cobo (La Casa Latina), and Karlene Burrell-Mcrae (Makuu).

ARCH Centers’ Architect Removal

In 2008, Penn picked Dagit Saylor, a Philadelphia architecture firm, to draw up renovations for ARCH due to its new role as a house for Penn cultural centers, research center, and some scholarship offices. However, these renovations were quickly abandoned, and the CRCs were relegated to their long-standing location in adjacent rooms in ARCH’s basement. 

The current cultural centers’ layout in the basement of ARCH. Photo shows tables set up on the right side of the hallway and flags from Latin countries hung from the ceiling. Photo courtesy of Daily Pennsylvanian.

Fast-Forward: the Fight for More Space

In November 2019, after nearly a decade of student advocacy, Penn’s former president Amy Gutmann offered to allow the centers to expand further into ARCH. Rather than being offered as what the students were owed, space in ARCH was presented as an administrative gift that students would be wise to take advantage of. The deal failed to fully meet the demands of students, which included giving each center its own building as was the case at most other elite universities. Leaders of the Penn Association for Gender Equity (PAGE) recommended  that fraternities be removed from their houses on campus, which would create space for the CRCs to expand. On this basis, CRC student leaders rejected Gutmann’s offer.

Student Body Division and the Growth of “7B”

Working with the university-staffed Cultural Resource Centers were a coalition of student groups representing myriad identities. Originally these groups included the United Minorities Council (UMC), UMOJA, the Black student group, the Latinx Coalition (LC), and the Asian Pacific Student Coalition (APSC). Over time, the Lambda Alliance, the queer student coalition, Penn Association for Gender Equity (PAGE), and Natives at Penn (NAP) joined the coalition to form the 7 Boards (7B). The 7B came to serve as liaisons between administrators, CRCs, and students.

The Spring 2022 Town Hall and the Aftermath

In March 2022, NAP, APSC, UMOJA, and the LC hosted a town hall which the Daily Pennsylvanian wrote about in March 2022. These 7B members pitched the acceptance of a VPUL-ARCH renovation deal, given that the University met student needs in the process. There was some doubt in the crowd about whether this would be possible, but in the end, the general consensus was that more space is needed and that the proposal would be a start. Unfortunately, the students’ doubts were realized.

Although ARCH appears to have been handed over to the CRCs, there’s still a lot of work to do. Despite a well-advertised reopening ceremony last year, the layout of ARCH has not changed, and the four CRCs still occupy their basement rooms. The University has promised to continue making renovations over the next few years to create a space that the students want.

While there have been many wins in terms of support for communities of color at Penn, many promises were altered or broken across the past five decades. The plans to renovate ARCH to support 4B have been stalled for years, and even now, with NAP in the loop, no concrete plans have been set. The three main cultural houses are no closer to establishing their own spaces (unlike GIC and the LGBT Resource Center), due in no small part to their lack of significant alumni donations. The fight for minority spaces and disenfranchised voices still continues, despite claims otherwise. Cultural division and lack of knowledge remain the largest barriers.