Finding Affinity on Campus

This year, in partnership with the Parents’ Association, Park launched an affinity group program with the hope of engaging parents and guardians across the Park community in thoughtful conversation and connection with fellow community members who share common backgrounds and lived experiences. The initiative has gained participation and engagement, earning positive responses from the parent community.

Significantly, however, affinity and alliance groups have always existed at Park, and in all school communities, even when they aren’t labeled as such. As Connie Yepez, Park’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, notes, “Each athletics team, advisory group, and grade level represents an affinity group with which its members identify. Various spaces, such as the faculty room or gendered bathrooms, similarly exist already as ‘affinity’ spaces. Even Park itself—the larger community our families join when deciding to send their children to Park—is an affinity group. As a community, we accept and even celebrate these types of affinities.”

Connie observes, however, that criticism of affinity groups often centers on the perception that they are exclusionary, and notes that reframing this mindset is essential as we move forward with this initiative. “Our view of affinity groups as being an intentional and appropriate grouping that provides support to members of the community that often feel ‘othered’ is crucial,” she notes, and she underscores that “the feelings of isolation that come with marginalized identities are lifted when safe spaces are created to show members of our community that they are not alone.” Affinity groups provide an essential opportunity for people within the community to come together to talk about common experiences, raise questions and develop solutions, support each other, and together find ways to negotiate the larger community space we all share. Connie says, ”The shared connections and understanding these groups facilitate and the opportunity they create to amplify voices of people outside the centered group can serve to deepen the understanding of the community’s diverse identities and needs, and thereby create a greater sense of community for all.”

Across recent decades, Park has found ways to support students’ need for affinity and alliance groups, formal and informal. Peter Boskey ’05, who has gone on to a career as an educator and diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioner, founded what was most likely the first middle school-based Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) in the state when he was a Park student. Park music teachers (see companion story, page 20) found ways to use the opportunity to get students singing together as a way to create de facto affinity spaces. In recent years, the recognition that students want, need, and deeply benefit from opportunities to gather in affinity spaces has become widely embraced—and it began, quite organically, with “Power Lunch.”

In her first year at Park, Park librarian Elyse Seltzer noticed that there were some Black girls in Grade 5 who didn’t want to go outside during recess.

“They didn’t have options for how they could spend their recess time. So I told them, ‘Tell your teacher you are coming to the Library.’” Park’s library is a wonderful place for kids wanting a refuge of any sort, and so, with this offer, an affinity space began to take shape.

The following year, Elyse put out the word that all students in Grades 6–8 who identified as people of color were welcome to gather in the Library during lunchtime. Three eighth grade girls took her up on the invitation, and Power Lunch was born.

Though originally established as an affinity group for Black girls in Grade 8, the membership and the dynamic of the group has shifted over time. “Once, when the eighth graders were busy on one of our meeting days, they suggested to the Black girls in Grade 7 that they go in their place. But then the eighth graders expected the seventh graders to leave once they came back!” Elyse talked to the older girls about their role as leaders and encouraged them to invite the seventh graders into the space, and encouraged them to become mentors. Ironically, even though the initiative began with Grade 5 girls (members of the Class of 2020), it took two years before those first participants were able to join Power Lunch when they entered Grade 7.

Often, the regular lunchtime meetings served as an opportunity to check in, or even just to socialize. Sometimes, topics arose organically, and at other times, Elyse would provide a discussion prompt. Elyse notes, “For example, we would look at Beyonce’s ‘Homecoming’ video and consider the cultural representations it references, what we identified with, and what we didn’t.” Significantly, however, the regular pattern of gatherings in and of itself created the space for channels of support and connection that would not otherwise have existed—a place where students could now bring issues and questions that arose in the course of student life, and find the necessary help.

One powerful example of this arose in response to plans for the annual “photo day” schedule. The girls raised the concern that their slot on the schedule fell after their P.E. class, in which they would be running around and working up a sweat. They wanted to look their best for photos, yet knew that P.E. activities would ruin their carefully managed hair styling. “It’s the kind of concern that someone who understands Black hair immediately gets...and that someone who doesn’t understand might dismiss,” Elyse notes. The existence of the affinity group, and the trust it engendered, ensure that the participants felt seen, heard, and understood. Elyse observes, “The members really became a support group for each other.”

While the initiative originally responded to the energies of a group of girls, its existence provided a ready platform to include others, particularly in response to challenging issues. When a Black Park boy was called the n-word by a player on an opposing sports team, Power Lunch provided a forum in which boys and girls could come together to work through the powerful feelings this incident engendered with Elyse, Connie Yepez, and other members of the Park support team.

Membership, too, fluxuates year to year, depending on the group and the areas of interest. Sometimes the membership is only Black girls. Sometimes, Black boys join. Sometimes, Latinx students. Elyse says, “It’s been what it needs to be, in the time it is needed.”

Last spring, participation in the affinity space continued as Park went “virtual,” and it continued to provide an essential base of connection, particularly as events heightened the urgency and power of the Black Lives Matter conversation. The virtual affinity space also provided a welcome opportunity for students of color in Grades 6–8 to gather at a time when gatherings of any kind were not possible.

While Power Lunch is the affinity group with the longest tradition at Park, students interested in celebrating Asian heritage have also established a regular affinity group presence. This year, Park invited Upper Division students to engage in a wide array of affinity groups, including:

ALL FAMILIES ARE DIFFERENT (AFAD) for students who have one parent, divorced parents, same-gender parents, and students in adoptive families.

JEWISH STUDENTS AFFINITY GROUP for students who identify, or whose families identify, as Jewish.

LGBTQ+ AFFINITY GROUP for any student who identifies as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, questioning, non-binary, or gender fluid.

PEOPLE OF COLOR/MULTIRACIAL AFFINITY GROUP for students who identify as Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Hispanic or multiracial (including students who went to Power Lunch)

WHITE ANTIRACIST AFFINITY GROUP for students who identify as white and want to learn strategies towards being antiracist.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, student engagement in affinity groups has diminished in this year’s virtual context. Even when on campus, students cannot gather with others outside their clusters, so affinity groups meet, by necessity, on Zoom. While parent engagement has increased by way of the virtual meeting space, students wanting first and foremost to prioritize “hang out time” with their friends, seem to find “one more Zoom gathering” in their days less than compelling.

This reality reminds us, however, that Park’s first affinity groups have always originated in students’ desire to hang out socially, not necessarily for the deeper context an affinity group may access. In pre-COVID times, one draw of affinity groups was the opportunity to gather socially at lunchtime with people outside a student’s assigned lunch group. This year at Park, however, students are not eating in the Dining Room. While they are still contained to their grade-based clusters, these groups are larger than the typical lunch table group, and the students therefore have more latitude to find and gather with the people they choose. It’s entirely age-appropriate, we have to acknowledge, for adolescents to choose free time with friends over any kind of organized gathering as they explore and affirm their identities.

Some parents have noted that they would like to encourage their children to join affinity groups that connect with their family’s identity. We believe, however, that it is essential to allow students the room to opt in to this engagement because they want and need it themselves, not in response to parental direction. That said, we know that some of the most engaged student participants are the children of families who are themselves actively involved in community-based affinity groups. These children, following the modeling provided by their parents, often become the leaders of similar campus opportunities.

As the family affinity groups have gained momentum this year, a participant observed, “It’s so valuable to have a forum where the people present share a similar experience to whatever is on your mind. Because the Park parent/guardian group is so unique and diverse, we can really be a resource for each other.”

Even as each of the groups focuses on distinct and different topics, there is a welcome sense of relief in finding a space in which to talk about the concerns that impact their families, and to connect with others with similar experiences. Participants agree that “Everyone really seems to be needing the space.”

It comes full circle, then: affinity groups at Park first took root among students, and the parent groups have followed, yet we’re excited that this parent engagement is likely to inspire and encourage greater participation among students going forward. In short, we hope to see affinity groups become a foundational part of the Park community experience. Thank you to all whose commitment helps support these aspirations.