Following a call from students of color in the fall of 2015, Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate and Chief Diversity Officer Patrick Sims, Dean of Students Lori Berquam and Chancellor Rebecca Blank met to create a space at UW-Madison for black students that will open this spring.
The Black Cultural Center will open in room 106 of the Red Gym, the space that is currently the Study Abroad Resource Center, in February. It will be affiliated with the Multicultural Student Center.
Sims and Berquam formed a team that travelled to find models of black cultural centers at other institutions and used their findings to begin plans for UW-Madison’s space.
“This was a way to try and demonstrate that there’s a willingness to engage students and acknowledge that some of the current efforts of themselves aren’t sufficient to address the full range of experiences that students are going to have on campus,” Sims said.
Sims said the BCC will be a space for black students to be themselves and not feel responsible for teaching other students to think critically about issues that affect communities of color. It will be a place for students, both of color and not, to explore the variety of black cultures, including African, African American and Caribbean.
Gabe Javier, director of the MSC and LGBT Campus Center, is one of several individuals who is on the advisory board comprised of students, faculty and staff that is establishing the BCC. He said the group is working on operational philosophies of the BCC, thinking of strategical partnerships and ensuring that the mission of the BCC complements the mission of the MSC and the Division of Student Life.
“I think it'll be a programming space, a community space, a study space?a flexible and multi-use space for black students and centering the experiences of black students,” Javier said. “I think it will give the ability to explore experiences of African American and black students on campus. It will honor the university's commitment to diversity in that way as well.”
Critiques surrounding the use of space on campus, specifically in the Red Gym, have circulated since Amazon proposed to set up a Pickup Point there earlier this year.
“A space is always going to be an issue on this campus in terms of what space and how much space,” Javier said. “I think the students who are in conversation and who are partners understand the limitations of space but are hopeful that we will be able to make a space that people will feel like we can really be brought to life for the communities who will use it.”
Sims said that the BCC is just the beginning of of a larger conversation that is being had between him and Berquam to support all marginalized students on campus.
