Coalition for Women's Identities
Thursday, 26 October 2017 - 5:16pm
The Coalition for Women’s Identities (CWI) Directorate Board recently met in Kissimmee, Florida for the annual Mid-Year Meeting to prepare programs and services for members leading up to the 2018 ACPA Convention. We want our CWI membership to know how we spent our time, and what we learned, accomplished, and plan to do moving forward.
Although the CWI directorate gathers online monthly, Mid-Year is the first time new directorate members, such as myself, meet many of the other directorate members in person. We stay together in a house for an intensive work session, lasting a little over four days, to build relationships that will carry CWI’s work through our three-year terms.
Our main emphasis for this meeting was to critically examine how we, as the CWI directorate, embody and execute ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization. To prepare for our gathering, I, and many of the other White members of the directorate, read a free, downloadable e-book . . . BUT I’M NOT RACIST! Tools for Well-Meaning Whites by Kathy Obear. NASPA offers a book club discussion guide, should you want to use it in your own work or community.
We spent a lot of time talking about the institutionalized racism and systematic oppression that are present in our society, higher education, and in our own coalition and directorate structure. We examined our own identities, and where we hold privilege, where we are marginalized, and those situations where our identities may be considered either privileged or marginalized. We spent time in caucuses. Racial Equity Tools.org and Roots of Justice offer explanations for how caucuses can be helpful in dismantling racism and provide resources for productively engaging in caucuses.
Reflecting on the results of the Spring 2017 ACPA CWI Directorate Chair election, we recognized the urgency to begin dismantling the privilege institutionalized in our own election process and leadership structures. We are beyond thrilled to announce that we now have two co-chair elects, Shanice Clarke, Program Coordinator for Pan-African Commons at Portland State University, and Kelly Schrader, Assistant Director for Title IX and Integrated Prevention Education at The Evergreen State College. They will assume the co-chair roles at the end of the 2018 ACPA Convention. Shanice and Kelly’s recent CWI blog posts demonstrate their individual strengths, thoughtfulness, humility, and leadership capacities.
We left the meeting clear on how we want to carry out the mission of CWI through our goals and objectives for the year. We intend to engage and support the spectrum of our femme, woman-, and female-identified members through professional development opportunities, increase the scholarship capacity of our members, grow our advocacy efforts, and help all our members engage with ACPA’s Strategic Imperative on Racial Justice and Decolonization.
I hope this blog gives you a better sense of the upcoming year’s work of CWI directorate and who we aspire to be. We know our members have valuable insights and skills to offer each other in the areas of equity and inclusion, advocacy, scholarship, and professional development. Please reach out to CWI at cwi@acpa.nche.edu to find out how you can become more engaged with the coalition or share with the directorate how we can best support you in our learning and advocacy efforts!
Chelsea Lyles
Directorate Member, Coalition for Women’s Identities
Ph.D. Student in Higher Education
Graduate Assistant, Assessment and Development
Virginia Tech’s Division of Student Affairs
Opinions expressed in this post are my own.