CAMPUS
MAKING SPACE FOR MENA STUDENTS A COMMUNITY’S FIGHT FOR REPRESENTATION AT TUFTS
By Liani Astacio
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canning the empty check-boxes of racial and ethnic groups on the Tufts application or in surveys sent out by the administration, students will find a diverse mix of identities listed as options. However, Middle Eastern and North African, or MENA, is almost never included among them. Currently, there is neither data collected on MENA students at Tufts nor an identity center or other community space specifically dedicated to their community. Tufts’ identity centers are important sites for people of marginalized identities to find joy, community, and a space to explore their identity and culture. Without such a space, many MENA students at Tufts feel they have been left without essential resources afforded to other campus communities. In the United States, the Middle Eastern community has experienced increasing rates of discrimination, especially after 9/11. Despite their specific experiences of ethnoracial oppression, the US federal government classifies people from the MENA regions as white. However, many people with MENA origins do not identify as white, and many non-MENA, non-Latine whites also do not perceive MENA people as white. Senior Omayma Dalal, a Moroccan and Syrian student, said, “Whiteness… comes with the white privilege. And obviously, there’s a lot of [Middle Eastern and North African people] with darker pigmented skin. So no one will stop us in the street and be like, you’re white.” Sabrina Rangwani, co-president of the Persian Students Association, echoed this sentiment, and said, “I have yet to meet someone who feels that a white label is adequately representative of us. We are forced to officially label ourselves as white while receiving none of the benefits of whiteness.” With a majority of the MENA community not identifying with or benefitting from whiteness, it begs the question as to why they
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have not been given resources specifically dedicated to them at Tufts and beyond. Dalal feels that the lack of a MENA representative on the Tufts Community Union Senate and the absence of an identity center for MENA students “makes [MENA students] feel like we’re invisible minorities that no one’s acknowledging.” Additionally, Ragwani commented on the role of a MENA identity center in promoting recognition of the Tufts MENA community. She said, “Having staff at this identity center that are ‘on our side’ might help us get further in our efforts with [the] admin[istration].” Dean James Glaser, a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Council, described the current institutional support Tufts provides for MENA students in a written statement to the Tufts Observer. “There is a Muslim chaplain and there are prayer rooms available for MENA students who practice Islam. There is a Muslim House on campus as well,” he wrote. Dalal described how Muslim spaces at Tufts are not replacements for a community space for MENA students, noting “most Arabs [at Tufts], even in [the Arab Student Association], identify as Christian, atheist, or of a minor[ity] religion,” despite the conflation between the two communities. Other Division of Student Diversity and Inclusion centers have been considered options for some MENA members to find community; however, they are not a total replacement for having a dedicated MENA identity center. Dalal elaborated on how some North African students have acknowledged that while they are part of the African diaspora, the Africana Center is not always the best fit for them. Dalal said, “We’re not part of the Black identity, and we don’t share Black history, so it makes us feel uncomfortable trying to integrate into a space like that because we know that that’s not our space, and we do not want to disrespect it.” Dalal noted some MENA