By 3B
As the community of minority students grows on Penn’s campus, the need for adequate safe cultural spaces has never been more apparent. The 6B, which include UMOJA, the Asian-Pacific Student Coalition (APSC), the Latinx Coalition (LC), the United Minorities Council, the Penn Association for Gender Equity, and the LAMBDA Alliance, have been tirelessly advocating for individual buildings on campus for each of the cultural centers in the ARCH building: Makuu, the Black student center; PAACH, the Pan-Asian American Community House; and La Casa Latina. These buildings are currently all situated in the basement of the ARCH building, sharing walls and space in a way that perpetuates the erasure and suppression of students of color. It is simply not enough space for the 4,000 minority students on Penn’s campus, especially given how much smaller student organizations are allotted significantly more space and funding. The latest proposal from administration was to give the entire Arch building to the Latinx Coalition, UMOJA, and the Asian-Pacific Student Coalition (3B) and grant each group their own floor. This cannot be a long term solution to the demands put forth by the 6B and therefore was not accepted.
With the many administrative changes, it is our hope that the next president’s fundraising campaign will include establishing three cultural centers and providing them with funding at its forefront. The university has the resources to accommodate the needs of students of color, but, although it claims to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion, it has shown that supporting and creating space and safety for minority students has not been its priority.
The mission of the cultural houses is severely limited by their current location and by the lack of funding and chronic understaffing issues the centers face. The collective demand of UMOJA, APSC, and LC is for three separate houses located between 36th and 38th street. With more space, these cultural centers could more adequately serve the almost 4,000 undergraduate students who identify as POC at Penn.
In contrast, fraternity houses line Locust Walk. The University continues to prioritize the most violent spaces on campus — fraternities, the most prevalent location of sexual violence — over those that serve communities of color, who are disproportionately targets of that same violence. UMOJA, APSC, and the LC have been advocating for more space in buildings equivalent to those that house fraternities and other organizations on Locust. The administration has continually denied our requests, despite University-wide acknowledgement in the past three decades that our campus should be more equitable.
An open forum with our constituents showed that, given the current pandemic, many are still concerned about space limitations in the cultural centers given the ongoing pandemic. Our communities have also been feeling the trauma of racial violence in the past year, and the safety of our constituents is compromised with inadequate resources.
Often, our needs are not heard by the administration. The platforms in place for us have not been held up in the past semester, as we weren’t granted meetings with high-level administration and our speaking time was cut short during the only statement we gave on behalf of UMOJA, APSC, and the LC. This is an ongoing effort, the 3B has been working on a full proposal the entire summer with the hopes that it will be presented to administrators this year. We welcome any and all students who want to get involved in this process as the visibility and safety of these cultural centers would serve to benefit all students on Penn’s campus.
Penn Disorientation Guide 