The independent newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis since 1878 THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 2025
VOLUME 146, NO. 14
WWW.STUDLIFE.COM
Students establish first-ever WashU NAACP chapter
LAUREN SMITH
SPECIAL ISSUES EDITOR
Newly-elected SU leadership outline budget and advocacy goals TANVI GORRE
After a year of development from student organizers, WashU will have its own chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This development comes after decreased Black-student enrollment this year following the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action. The new chapter will be housed under the department of African and African American Studies (AFAS) as an external group, after its founders experienced complications getting approved as an official student group. Sophomore Precious Barry, President and founder, initially tried to make the organization a student club under Student Union (SU), but due to issues with review by Campus Life, shifted to housing the group as part of AFAS. With over 2,200 chapters across the country, the NAACP is the nation’s largest civil rights organization, and has been at the forefront of battling racial discrimination, political disenfranchisement, and educational inequality for over a century. Barry said her motivation for starting the chapter came from her work in the St. Louis County NAACP chapter and her desire to promote civic engagement at WashU. She wants to create more spaces on campus that support students of color who are struggling with their sense of belonging. “Being a St. Louis native, coming from a provisionally Black school district to a provisionally white institution, you deal with that feeling of not feeling like you belong,” Barry said. Barry mentioned that joining the Association of Black Students (ABS) helped her combat some of the imposter syndrome she experienced at the beginning of her time at WashU. In turn, she hopes the new NAACP chapter will be another
NEWS EDITOR
SAM POWERS | MANAGING PHOTO EDITOR WashU NAACP President Precious Barry (right) and Secretary Bralin Duckett in front of Seigle Hall. space where students are able to exist as their full selves and advocate for necessary change, regardless of their background or political affiliation. Barry said ABS and the NAACP chapter plan to collaborate frequently, as both organizations do similar work. Sophomore Spencer Snipe, ABS President, said he was excited about the establishment of the NAACP chapter because of what differentiates it from other multicultural organizations. “We have so many Black orgs on campus, but the NAACP is very good because it’s mainly civically minded,” Snipe said. “The primary goal is to be engaged in the community, and be engaged in government affairs.” Barry expressed similar sentiments about the work of the NAACP chapter, pointing to different ways in which the club wants to help members learn about government. “We want to make sure that students have the opportunity to meet elected officials [during] our events, get engaged by being in Saint Louis, so [that] they get to see who’s in the
community, get to explore, and continue to be a part of the process by being civically engaged,” Barry said. She also said the NAACP will focus heavily on voter engagement and empowering student leadership. Gabrielle Weeden — faculty advisor for the NAACP chapter and Community & Program Coordinator for the AFAS department — said this is the first time the department has ever housed an external organization. Currently, the chapter is unrecognized by SU, because groups must be approved by Campus Life before being voted on by the Activities Committee. As a result, the chapter does not have access to WashU buildings for meetings and cannot appeal for funds from SU Treasury. Barry said that the NAACP has its own constitution that individual chapters follow, which was in conflict with Campus Life requirements. She did not feel comfortable making any changes to the document the NAACP provided her. “Even changing a bylaw or a word in the NAACP constitution in my
opinion is silencing the voices of all members— that’s changing a foundational and powerful document. Which would lessen our impact as an organization,” she said. Barry hopes that Campus Life, SU, and the NAACP can find a way to compromise with the constitutional conflict and [that] the NAACP chapter can become an official student group, like NAACP chapters at universities nationwide. Sophomore Varun Vadhera, SU Activities Committee Chair, reiterated that the committee never reviewed the NAACP for approval because the NAACP never got past the review stage by Campus Life. “If the group is able to provide a constitution that makes it past the initial screening by Campus [Life], the SU Activities Committee would be more than happy to review their application for SU recognition during the next review cycle,” Vadhera said. Looking to the future, Barry said that she is excited for the important work that the chapter has ahead.
“I’m a Native student on Native land”: Students and faculty grapple with limited undergraduate resources, scholarships on campus ZACH TRABITZ INVESTIGATIVE NEWS EDITOR
When junior Marissa Mathieson, a Diné student at WashU, arrived on campus, she was frustrated to find how little support there is for Native American students such as herself. “I was disheartened and disappointed,” Mathieson said. “Something I was looking at when I was applying to schools was how strong the Native communities were. When I came to WashU, I found that the current state of Native support here was appalling, to say the least.” Mathieson said she was frustrated by WashU’s lack of an undergraduate Native affinity group on campus, courses about Native American Studies (NAS), and professors in ArtSci specializing in Native Studies. St. Louis is important to Native history, as it stands on top of what used to be the city of CahokiSG: one of the largest, most technologically advanced, and complex societies in the world. Native Americans in Cahokia flourished from about 1050 to 1350. Since there are not many opportunities to visit Cahokia, a place that carries significant weight in terms of its artistic and sociocultural merit, many students do not even know St. Louis is built upon it. At WashU, it has historically been difficult to find a class that looks at the peoples and cultures that have existed there. According to the Association on American Indian Affairs, as of
2019, there are 220 universities that offer a major, minor, or certificate in NAS in the U.S. Nationally, there are 2,982 higher-education institutions, meaning that only 5.5% of universities have NAS programs. Peer institutions of WashU — like Tufts University, Cornell University, and New York University — all have NAS programs. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville has the only NAS program in the greater St. Louis region. The Native population at WashU is small, at 0.1%. This figure is similar to universities like Tufts and Cornell, in part because of histories of oppression that have led to poverty rates and gaps in pre-college preparation for Native communities. And, partly owing to the fact that there is no NAS program or department at WashU, there are few resources on campus for Native students. In an op-ed published by Student Life in spring of 2024, Mathieson and senior Taryn Dixon — a Choctaw and Chickasaw student — argued that Native students need more support at WashU. In fall of 2024, Dixon and Mathieson wrote a 70-page proposal for a Native Studies class that they were in, which outlines three main recommendations: that WashU create an NAS department, that WashU perform a cluster hire of NAS scholars, and that WashU prioritize Nativestudent support and retention. Senior Cecilia Burke, who transferred to WashU from Columbia University her sophomore year, was shocked at how little support Native
JAIME HEBEL | HEAD OF ILLUSTRATION students have at WashU. “[Native students] don’t even have a dorm,” Burke said. “I went to Columbia for my freshman year, and [they have] Indigehouse, a themed living community. I had a friend who decided to live in Indigehouse his sophomore year, and it changed his entire perspective.” Research has shown that when underrepresented students have the opportunity to critically study their own past and history, those students feel more appreciated and seen. This semester, there are six classes offered at WashU that center around Native Americans.
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Cornell, on the other hand, is offering 10 NAS courses this semester. Southern Illinois University Edwardsville consistently offers 15 courses that fulfill the minor in NAS, of which they are offering seven this spring. Paige McGinley, Director of the American Culture Studies (AMCS) Program, said that when she stepped into her current role in 2022, one of her priorities was to align the program with other American Studies programs that have strong NAS offerings.
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Student Union’s (SU) Senate and Treasury leadership for this calendar year were elected in an internal election on Dec. 4. Student Life spoke to the Senate and Treasury’s eight new leaders to hear about their goals for the semester, with many members focusing on changing the budgeting, appeals, and correspondence procedure and addressing student concerns regarding academic resource accessibility, alcohol and substance abuse awareness, student health, and relationships with University leadership.
Treasury Junior Aryan Pradhan, the newly-elected Speaker of Treasury now in his second year in Treasury, hopes to maintain strong funding for culture groups on campus. “Cultural groups are now our second most funded organization group and I want to continue that trend [of] giving more funding to culture groups [and] affinity groups because they serve the widest body of populations,” Pradhan said. Pradhan also plans to expedite the appeals process. Appeals occur when Treasury allocates funds to SU-recognized Category I groups for unexpected expenses, and the process has historically required clubs to meet with a Treasury Representative to undergo a 10 to 16 day-long process of discussing budget needs. Pradhan said the long turnaround time for appeals has created scheduling issues, for sports clubs in particular. “We have run into issues this past semester with especially sports clubs where they want to go to Nationals, but they don’t know if they’ll qualify until a week before, but they’re appealing to Treasury three weeks in advance,” Pradhan said. In the past, clubs have used “placeholder submissions” to avoid this issue, by listing events or programming in their yearly allocated budgets even though they might not happen, in part because of long wait times. This upcoming semester, Treasury appeals will use a more comprehensive form initially instead of having Treasury Representatives meet with clubs, which will reduce the turnover to just two days, according to Pradhan. Annual budgets that list events that might not happen lead to more money being allocated than a club is using, which some members of SU leadership said was the cause of this year’s diminishing appeals budget. Retrieving this money can take months, as Treasury has to wait until after the scheduled date of the event to recoup the funds. “We just had our retrievals come back, and we retrieved about $100,000 which is honestly less than I was hoping for; that may not last us until the end of the year,” Pradhan said. “We will continue to do more retrievals, which will help replenish the appeals pot.”
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