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Offsite Camp Base for Social Change on Campus
Through the support of the Division of Student Affairs Innovation Grant, Social Change and Intercultural Engagement (SCIE) was able to resurrect its InterSections Retreat in Spring 2023. InterSections took place from February 3rd-5th at Glen Lake Camp and Retreat Center in Glen Rose, TX with 23 student participants.
The purpose of InterSections is to help students explore how their identities and values connect to the communities of which they are a part through workshops, small group discussions, and individual reflections.
The retreat is also intentionally named after the analytical framework Intersectionality coined by civil rights advocate and critical race theory scholar, Kimberlé Crenshaw, in the late 80s and early 90s.
Over the course of the weekend, participants engaged in a total of 12 workshop sessions and the overwhelming favorite was the “Life Maps” activity where students were tasked with illustrating on a piece of paper significant events that have shaped who they are as a person.
“Someone may look like they have it all together, but you don’t know what people are going through behind closed doors,” Ruiz said reflecting on the activity. “Every person has a story and that story is very important in crafting who they are and why they may do the things that they do.”
InterSections encouraged students to consider situational dynamics such as power, privilege, oppression, dominant culture based on identity, and bias that affect professional and social environments as well as people’s ability to find themselves represented or not due to those factors.
“What the retreat helped me to do was navigate the intersections of my identities within the context of SMU, which is different within different contexts,” Ava Hawkins ’26 said. “It was good to also get insight into how other people felt on SMU’s campus as well.”
Hawkins is very passionate about activism and implementing social change on campus but it quickly resulted in burnout and frustration. “I’ve been constantly reminded that I’m a student first and foremost,” she said. “I wasn’t treating myself like a student, I was treating myself like somebody who’s here to engage, diversify, and change things. When I look at other people, I’m like ‘this is unfair – you’re sitting here, you go to class, and you go back to your residential commons and you chill’ – but me, I’m wandering around and I feel overwhelmed.”
Following the retreat, the cohort was invited by SCIE to attend two monthly reunion sessions to assess how the skills and lessons learned were being applied on campus and in the local community. At the conclusion of April’s meeting, all students also received a certificate of completion.
