This panel was made as promotional content for World College Day, for the theme of “Where All Voices Are Welcome”. The panelists are members from the Centers for Diversity and Inclusion talking about the benefits of having minority communities on campus.
Eden Kayser:
Hello, this is Eden Kayser station manager of WLMC Landmark College Radio in Putney, Vermont, and member of the 2023 College Radio Day USA Board.
This year’s theme for World College Radio Day is “Where All Voices Are Welcome”. So today I invited student leaders from Landmark’s Centers for Diversity and Inclusion, which we call CDI. These centers are a community resource for minority groups on campus, such as race, gender, sexuality, religion, and more.
We will be hearing from students representing the Rise Up Center, the Center for Women and Gender, Stonewall Center, Pa’ Lante Center, Interfaith Center, Asian Community Club, Forever Family Club, and Physical Disability Safe Space. Let us hear about the CDI.
Amina Davis:
I’m Amina, my pronouns are she/her and I am a staff member at the Rise Up Center.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
My name is Nailah, and I also go by she/ her pronouns, and I also work at the Rise Up Center, I’m the VP.
Tavon Wilson:
My name is Tavon and I work for the Rise Up Center, my pronouns are he/him.
Julian Bond:
How is it going, everyone? It is your boy, JB. For those who do not know me, I have been at Landmark for five years now since Fall 2019.
Madison Perkins:
I am Madison Perkins. I am from Vancouver, BC (British Columbia) Canada. I have been a Landmark student for the last two years. I am getting my degree in psychology. I am the coordinator of the Women and Gender Center.
Nika Anderson:
And I am her lovely little worker bee. My name is Nika Anderson. I am from Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I have been at Landmark for at least two semesters now. I am hoping to get my associate degree and then transfer for a marine biology degree.
Guinevere Downey:
Hi, I am Guinevere Downey. My pronouns are she/her. I am the coordinator at the Stonewall Center.
Char Larson:
Hello, my name is Char. I go by he/they pronouns, and I am the vice-coordinator of the Stonewall Center.
Kaylee Hudson:
Hi, I am Kaylee, my pronouns are she/her. I am a volunteer at the Stonewall Center.
Ian McCrory:
My name is Ian. My pronouns he/they, and I am one of the senior staff at the Stonewall Center.
Bryce Feibus:
Hi, my name is Bryce, and I am one of the staff at this Stonewall Center. I go by he/they pronouns.
Ryan Sanchez:
My name is Ryan Sanchez. This is my fifth year here and I work for the Pa’ Lante Center as an assistant coordinator, and I also play on the baseball team.
Yael Schwartz:
Hi, my name is Yael Schwartz. My pronouns are she/her and they/them. I am Jewish and I am the coordinator for the Interfaith Center for Diversity and Inclusion on campus with CDI.
Natasha Sonenshine:
Hello, my name is Natasha Sonenshine, I use the pronouns, they/she/it. I am the coordinator of Asian Community Club, and my heritage is Kazakhstan.
Madison Wan:
I’m Madison, I use she/her/hers and I am one of the staff at the Asian Community Club, and my mom was from Mainland China, and my dad was from Hong Kong, and I was born here in Boston.
Zoe Feil:
My name is Zoe, I run Forever Family Club, and I am from Bronx, New York. I have been at Landmark since Spring 2020, and I am a senior.
Blue Bax:
Hi there, my name is Blue Bax. I used they/she pronouns. I am an RA on campus and I’m currently running the Physical Disability Safe Space within the CDI centers.
Eden Kayser:
What is your center and what does it do?
Nailah Quail-Parker:
The Rise Up Center is basically a center here on campus. It is a part of CDI, the Centers for Diversity and Inclusion and it’s basically for the Black/POC students here on campus. It is just so that students of color can have a sense of community, we are a minority group on this campus. So just so we can have a center to have a safe space and we do programs and movies and games and racial issues and all that. We also have sister talk.
Tavon Wilson:
We’re about to start our bro talk too.
Ryan Sanchez:
The Pa’ Lante Center is basically what Rise Up is for the African American population. We cater technically to the Latinos and Hispanics of the Landmark community and whoever wants to join.
Natasha Sonenshine:
Asian Community Club is a club on campus, mainly for Asian and Eurasian students. We are a safe space for Asian students as well as a space where allies of the Asian community can learn about Asian issues as well as Asian culture and heritage.
Madison Perkins:
The Women and Gender Center essentially is a place for female identifying students as well as non-binary to come and just have that safe space to feel like they can express themselves freely and provide a community of support.
Guinevere Downey:
The Stonewall Center is a place for LGBTQ students to come together and talk about their lives, to have fun, to exist together. We do a lot of educational programming and fun programming, and we also have a clothing swap that we call the queer closet, where students can get gender affirming clothing.
Yael Schwartz:
The Interfaith Center is an inclusive space for people from all religious walks of life. You do not have to be observant or have any religious affiliation, all are welcome. But our main goal is to further advance and protect the rights of religious students on campus and ensure that everybody can practice their religious practices freely on campus.
Blue Bax:
Basically, we are a safe space on campus that meets every week on Wednesday from 6:00 to 7:00 PM, and we are the safe space for those who are physically disabled on this campus because we have a wide variety of people on campus who are and there has not really been a one group meeting for it yet, and we want to be able to allow those in the physically disabled community to feel like that they are not alone and also to discuss things like health insurance and things like that.
Zoe Feil:
Forever Family is a group for students on campus who were adopted or went through the foster care system, and it is a way for the hidden community of adoption and foster care to be able to meet one another and connect on experiences that we have.
Eden Kayser:
Why does your community group matter to students on campus?
Madison Perkins:
This campus has been more male, and so essentially the whole center was created to really make sure that the female identifying students had a place to go, because it was hard, there was more males than females here.
Ryan Sanchez:
There’s not that many Hispanic students here and not a lot of Hispanic kids that come here really have that familiar sight of being around their own people, and our purpose is to make anyone Hispanic or Latino or anyone that walks into our center feel very, very welcome, and it’s a free private space where they can come chill and they can come relax, and we’re just here to be equal and to give people opportunities to come hang out, to come socialize and bring everybody together.
Natasha Sonenshine:
Asian Community Club was something that originally started because we saw lack of it on campus like we had other Centers for other nationalities, but I saw the need for an Asian Community Club, so I started one, and it’s a space where we can advocate for Asian students on campus as well as have a safe space for Asian American students as well as Asian students.
Tavon Wilson:
Because it’s important for people who feel comfortable together. When you’re a minority and there’s not a lot of you out there, it’s hard to feel wanted or safe in a place.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
Or even seen.
Tavon Wilson:
Oh no, you do feel seen a lot because you’re the only one there actually. You get looked at a lot in a place where you like you guys can all just relate and just talk about the same issues or problems you guys go through as a community.
Guinevere Downey:
I think it’s important for us to have a space where we can talk about the issues that plague queer people in the world right now with all the hate that happens that we’re seeing, all the reactionary politics, and queer phobic laws that are being passed. I think it’s important for us to have a space where we can talk about that, where we don’t have to censor ourselves to censor the way that we live.
Nika Anderson:
We believe that everybody should have a safe space to go to. So, for the Women and Gender Center, it is for female identifying people and nonbinary people. It is just to make sure that they feel seen, they feel like they have a community and it’s important to have that because not a lot of places have that. So, at Landmark, this is a very special center, along with every other center that’s in the Frost building.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
I don’t know about these guys, but this is my first time coming to Vermont just to go to this school, so I was nervous coming here, I didn’t know if I was going to see people that look like me. So, I think the reason why it matters is that just like how these guys said that sense of community was very important because I was scared out of my mind just even attending the school because I didn’t know what the dynamic was going to be when I got here.
Char Larson:
I also see the Stonewall Center as a place for people who, especially like me, did not have an LGBTQ community at their old school, at their old workplace, anywhere. This is really the first time I get to hang out and be with other people who are LGBTQ and learn about them and their struggles as well.
Kaylee Hudson:
It’s a safe space on campus and it’s a way for queer people to feel connected to the Landmark community on campus. For me personally, one of the reasons I came to landmark was because the Stonewall Center was a thing, it was something that I really wanted to be a part of.
Yael Schwartz:
It’s important for at least in Judaism to have a community of people like them on campus, and especially when it comes to celebrating holidays or finding people who practice in a similar way as you, having a community is super important to feeling like you belong in a space. So being Jewish is a huge, important part of my life and being able to have a space where I can know that other people are coming at to do similar things or to also take part in their practices is extremely important to know that I’m not the only one, I’m not alone here.
Blue Bax:
Because there are some students who are discovering disabilities, they’ve lived with it for not that long. I know that when I joined this campus, I was only about a year past my disability coming into my life and some students may not know where to turn, some students may not know how they can qualify for health insurance or things like that, different benefits about it, and some students may just want to be able to share their grievances about certain subjects regarding pain or things like that, or just not being able to really be there every day, and that’s something that people don’t know about physical disabilities, is that on the surface it may look different, but reality every day is different.
Bryce Feibus:
I do think it is a place of discovery where people can find out a lot about the queer community that they may not have known before and can finally start to interact in with the community in a healthy manner that allows others to learn and just have fun.
Madison Wan:
Something that I noticed back in Boston, it seemed like a lot of our culture and roots are being slowly and slowly forgotten. A lot of Asian Americans, including myself, like I don’t even know my Chinese language that I grew up with, at least fluently, I know how to ask for a bottle of water or something. I think it’s good to go back to your roots and sort of be able to contribute to the future.
Natasha Sonenshine:
I also feel like for those who may have not grown up with Asian culture in their household, for example myself, I am from Kazakhstan originally, but I was adopted into an American family. So, it’s been very helpful learning about Asian culture through my peers and do research and learn more about my Asian culture and be able to contribute that to the community.
Zoe Feil:
I think it matters because adoption and foster care are both hidden identities. It’s something that is visible only when you’re in grade school if your parents are dropping you off, it’s not always something that people know about you unless you self-disclose, and so having people who have been part of that community come together, it’s a good way to kind of gauge the community and meet other people like you, I think that’s important.
Eden Kayser:
What do you want people to understand about yourself and your community?
Zoe Feil:
Adoption and foster care within mainstream media get played up a lot, either as a sob story or as a huge success, and a miracle almost. If you’re looking at Harry Potter, you’re looking at an orphan who kind of gets brought into his cousin’s, and he has powers and that’s why it’s so cool. But then you have Oliver Twist who grows up in an orphanage and is trying to get adopted, and that’s a huge, sad story, and I think understanding that there are a lot of intricacies that are at play for adoptees and people who’ve been in the system in a whole lot of different ways. So that’s kind of an important thing to understand, it’s not so black and white.
Ian McCrory:
I think a lot of times when you look at media, especially right now, a lot of times people in our community are villainized, and it’s usually villainized against other minorities, and I think I can speak for all of us and say that we want people to understand that that’s not who we are. We want to be free to express ourselves how we want, and we want to do that and also spread love and understanding that you are ok to express how you want.
Bryce Feibus:
Stereotypes are what people consider for a community, but really, stereotypes can be harmful and that should be kept in mind when you think about it. Like not every gay man is going to be talking about fashion and what drama they saw on TV. No, we’re just here and I think it’s important to focus on the normalization of it as well, because it’s not something super extraordinary, it’s just people being who they are. The amount of violence spurred on and the amount of name calling like groomers, pedophiles, all that. It’s just kind of spurred from either misunderstanding or bundling one issue with another.
Ian McCrory:
Or even the undertones which come with usually less than legal discrimination like blood donation, organ donation, stuff like that.
Guinevere Downey:
Queer people typically just want to exist in the world without being attacked for their identity, and there’s a lot of talk in particular circles about the queer agenda, the trans agenda, the gay agenda. There’s not really a queer, gay, trans, or any of that agenda, except can you leave us alone?
Char Larson:
Please?
Kaylee Hudson:
Please and can we be safe?
Char Larson:
We are just like you. We are people. We are here. We’re just a little queer.
Natasha Sonenshine:
It’s good to understand our heritage of course as we’ve said, but it’s also good to understand the Asian community because over the years we’ve faced much discrimination on occasion. I feel like being there to support one another, even if there’s discrimination, is very important because as I was younger, I got a lot of stigma for looking different than my peers and I feel like it’s important that we recognize that. I’m from Kazakhstan, so a lot of people don’t know much about Kazakhstan, so I always got “oh are you Chinese?” but no, I’m Kazakhstan. I’m Kazakh and I feel like we need to change people’s associations of the different Asian groups because most people will stereotype me as people from the movie Borat.
Madison Wan:
Yeah, there’s more to it, more than just Asians being Chinese or Indian or Korean, there’s Eurasians, you know?
Natasha Sonenshine:
Central Asians as well.
Blue Bax:
I am a below the knee amputee. I have been that way for almost two years, and I want people to be able to see me personally as on the surface I have two legs, good for me, but that’s only because I have a prosthetic leg, but it doesn’t mean that everything is easy. I still have a lot of pain. I still end the day trying to just take off my prosthetic as much as possible because I don’t want to walk, and for the rest of our community, of those who are physically disabled and not just amputees, I want people to be able to see us not as people who will constantly need help, but those who can receive it if needed because there are people who will just view us and think that these people constantly need help and on the surface that seems like the right thing to do, but sometimes people don’t want to feel like that they need it. They want to be able to feel like they can do things by themselves.
Amina Davis:
I’ll say that you’re not alone, there’s people there that can help you understand if you don’t understand yourself or know your background. Because some people come here and don’t know about themselves. So, it’s just like coming down to Rise Up, I feel like it would be helpful to them to get to know themselves and about other people and stuff.
Julian Bond:
It’s a safe space for everyone to have a rope in because we’re always open from Monday to Saturdays. It definitely has a major impact on my life and for me to be more social than being for who I am and never letting that stop me from what I want to do in life and all that type of stuff.
Nika Anderson:
I really want people to see me as not just an ally, but somebody who will always be in their corner. I’m a huge supporter of being a supporter. I don’t ever want somebody to come to me and feel like they can’t talk to me about something. I’m always going to be there if you need me to be there, regardless of what it is. If you need me, I will gladly pick up the phone or try my best to come and get you because it’s just who I am. I want to make sure that my friends know that I’m a friend and that I’m always going to be there.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
If you are not a part of that community, it’s ok to come down here. You can come down and you can learn. I know some people are skeptical and kind of sometimes scared to come down because they’re like, “well, I’m not POC so I don’t know if I should be in the Rise Up Center” it’s all inclusive, it’s for everybody. We do have hours just for us, but we also have programs where everybody’s invited so that they can learn about the community a bit more.
Yael Schwartz:
We are here to provide space for everyone to practice their religious practices or the spiritual practices or learn about different religions from people who practice them. But we also will not stand for any hate that is masked in religious beliefs.
Madison Perkins:
I want people to feel like they’re welcome here, and I think coming into this campus as a female identifying student myself, the biggest thing was, it was a bit of a struggle at first realizing that I was going to be the minority gender on campus. But it is a really good center to have and the whole reason I started working for it was to make sure that we did feel like we were supported and safe and that we could be here too.
Madison Wan:
As an individual, I’m not just the Asian student on campus. For some reason, a lot of people are surprised that I can be very sporty or loud or something. I’m very much an anomaly around my friends in a good way, but like they wouldn’t think that a 5’2 Asian female would be good at boxing and that sort of surprise is at first funny, but it’s just like, why wouldn’t you think that I can do that? The fact that some people might underestimate some of us or just associate us with like “oh you must like K pop then” or something like that.
Ryan Sanchez:
A lot of people that know me on this campus, they know me as like this very loud, very raucous person that likes baseball and is a huge Mets fan, and honestly, I’m just simply a student athlete who’s just trying to help the cause of being a student leader, and I see myself as that leader because I treat everybody that I see with respect and I welcome everyone to an activity or something that whatever I’m doing, I want them to be a part of because I don’t like leaving people out and I like to be that welcoming center type of guy where I can really open myself up to someone and I want them to feel the same thing that with me, because our space and Pa’ Lante is always about opening up and meeting new people. We’re about equality. We’re about unity. We’re about spreading positivity throughout the community, and uniting people as one.
Eden Kayser:
How have the centers helped you as a leader, advocate, or ally?
Madison Perkins:
Me and Nika have never actually been part of any other clubs out of high school or anything. I mean, this is the most involvement I’ve ever had with a school, and I felt I could do it. So, Mark made it happen and here we are.
Nika Anderson:
Yeah, no I’m the same. I feel like this is the most work I’ve put in ever in my entire life, and I’m proud of that. I’m happy and proud of that.
Kaylee Hudson:
For me personally, the centers helped me feel really connected on campus. I don’t know how connected I would be without it, but I don’t think I would be. It’s something that’s really helped me personally and also I was still figuring out my sexuality when I got here because I struggled with a lot of Imposter syndrome related to my sexuality and being in an accepting queer community really helped me find myself and know that yes, I am valid and now I can help other people like I can help validate other people and help other people find themselves.
Blue Bax:
I was a former Stonewall Center member, and being in there specifically allowed me to more understand my own identity, going to the Women and Gender Center allowed me to understand that it’s ok to not have typical pronouns of they/them, and I use they/she pronouns them because I was able to take in my own femininity and understand what I was and frankly being at the centers allowed me to gain leadership abilities that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else on campus.
Amina Davis:
I would say it helped me coming out of my shell because I’m very a shy person and going down to the centers helps me be comfortable. You don’t really get to see a lot of Black people around here, so your kind of like, oh, do they understand me? Do they know where I’m coming from if I even say this? So, I feel like coming down there, it helped me come out of my shell.
Nika Anderson:
It’s so nice to feel like you’re part of a community where you can just talk about being a female presenting person. It’s nice because you know that you’re in the same boat, you have similar struggles, if not the same, you could just talk about it, it’s just nice.
Char Larson:
I was never around the queer community, just being able to talk with other people like me, being able to be there and be seen as some sort of leader for them is something I never even imagined, and being able to be part of this is great and it’s made me understand myself more and my community more.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
It did help me talk to people more, because Mark is always telling me, “Hey, get out there. If you see somebody looks like you talk to them.” and even though I am extroverted, sometimes I know that not everybody is willing to just go up and talk to somebody so, I’m usually scared to just approach somebody and be like, “Hey, hi, what’s your name?” But I think being a leader at CDI has given me an excuse to talk to more people which I’m cool with, I can talk for days. Having an excuse to introduce myself to more people and being a leader is all due to CDI and Rise Up.
Julian Bond:
It helped me talk to a lot of people when I’m in the Centers, even though usually I just talk to the people that I usually hang out with and that know me. But over the years since once I first got here and started becoming a student leader here, being part of CDI and being an assistant coordinator since last semester which is so crazy, I remember my meeting with President Eden and everyone else from the Centers about that and telling me I was the assistant coordinator, and how much I became a student leader here and how much people know me. Because I didn’t expect a whole lot of people to know me at the campus but there’s a whole lot of new people that started to know me and most of the campus knows me how I am and all that type of stuff, and I’ll be like, how many people know me when I don’t even talk to them or even that has also been like a major impact of how I became as a person and a student leader to like the Centers and all that stuff and how much they meant me on this campus.
Ian McCrory:
The Center really helped me personally. I used to spend all my time in my room and I knew a lot of people like that, and I’ve seen a lot of those people who used to come into the room, come to events, and it’s because of the connection that we have with so many people on campus that we’re able to say, like, “Hey, why don’t you come down and hang out with us? No pressure.” They come to one event, and then two events, and then they volunteer and they’re with us all day. It’s amazing to see how much connection we have with everybody, even those who may not identify with us.
Zoe Feil:
I think the leaders have really helped me become more of a leader on campus, in my own life, being able to connect with other peers about experiences that I’ve gone through, that they’ve gone through as well, being able to have discussions and run discussions myself, I think that’s not something that I necessarily had experience of growing up, and so that was a good venue for me to be able to learn how to do that and learn how to be effective with connecting with other people in that sense.
Ryan Sanchez:
When I got to this school, I had no idea what CDI was. I knew the Rise Up Center, but I did not know that it went further than that and welcoming people in terms of friendships and bringing people together, I had no idea that was the main key to it. But then two years ago, in the Fall, 21 semester and the Spring of 22, Mark invited me to come work for Pa’ Lante, and I knew what the Pa’ Lante Center was, I just never knew what the gist of it was, I never got the gist of at the time, and going into the center and working there and helping out the community and doing all these events to spread Latin culture, Latino culture amongst people that are not familiar with it and to introduce them to it, it’s very valuable to me. It’s very wonderful that people get to see what the Latin cultures really like, and for me, the centers, what they’ve done for me, they’ve allowed me to become the person that I’ve always wanted to be here, a leader that welcomes everybody into his arms no matter what their circumstances and is and is able to give them a free space and allowed to say whatever they want to me, however they feel. I want people to feel that freedom when they walk into Pa’ Lante. That’s my main purpose of being an assistant coordinator, that’s my main purpose of being a student leader. The leadership quote traits, I got that from baseball because I used to be the captain of the baseball team. I was the captain of the baseball team from the 2020 to 2022 school year around that range and I carried myself the same thing with my teammates. I always welcomed them in the practice, I always helped them with whatever fundamental they needed to work on, and I always just tried my best with just helping people. I love welcoming people and it’s made me into a person that’s become more open and more mature about myself and who I am and how I interact with people, because it gives me that voice that I never thought I really had. I feel braver, I feel more like myself, who I grew up as, a person who’s very prideful of being Puerto Rican and being Hispanic and growing up in New York City, it’s already hard as it is with the environment and coming into this center every day, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, just going in there, I can just feel like myself. I can speak up for myself. I could be prideful on what I believe in. I could be prideful of who I am as a person, as a Latino Hispanic man at 21 years old, just to pave the way for other students to feel that way too, that’s my goal.
Madison Wan:
Being part of the centers in general, like I’m part of the Woman and Gender Center and whatever Center you’re part of, it just empowers you for whatever that center is for or just in general, and you have a voice that you’re able to give out and make people aware of, and then when people come into the Centers, it’s like people that you’ve never seen on campus before and so once they’re interested in the Asian Community Club, then you get to connect with more people, relate to more people, even if they’re not specifically Asian or whatever, it’s just a cool place to hang out.
Guinevere Downey:
Over the years, I’ve found myself becoming more and more accepting and more and more understanding of things I don’t understand if that makes any sense. When I started working at the Center, I was pretty cynical about nonstandard queer identities and over the years I feel like I’ve really grown because I’ve had to sit there and examine my own beliefs and examine the person that I think I am and the person that I want to be, do I want to be the type of person who judges something that I don’t understand just because I don’t understand it?, Or do I want to be the type of person who takes a moment to step back and try to understand it and ask questions?
Madison Perkins:
I’m constantly learning every day. Every day there’s a new thing that we could learn whether it be, how can we support someone more specifically? How can we make it, so someone feels included? How can we adapt? How can we change? How can we grow? That kind of stuff.
Bryce Feibus:
To a degree, the Center has opened my horizons and I’ve discovered things that I really never knew, identities that people decide for themselves that I would have never thought of for myself, never even thought could possibly exist, and it’s just interesting to see how people decide what they are rather than allowing the world to decide for them, and that’s just a great thing, personal freedom, after all.
Natasha Sonenshine:
I started in the Centers as part of Forever Family, and it definitely helped me see that there’s a need for advocacy in the community, and definitely helped me find something meaningful to do while advocating for my peers, whether that be Asian students, LGBTQ students, or students who are adopted, I definitely have found a home with CDI and definitely is something meaningful that I would like to continue wherever I go in life.
Yael Schwartz:
It’s been really cool to see how all of the Centers kind of support each other, so not just within my own center, but knowing that last semester I ran an event that was backed by the Stonewall Center and everybody works together to support each other within the CDI family and we call it that but it really does feel like oh, like I see someone in a CDI sweatshirt, and I’m like, oh, that person’s cool because I know that they have this similar passion for diversity and inclusion on campus and they’re doing something about it.
Natasha Sonenshine:
The centers and CDI as a whole are like a family, and I really appreciate that because no matter who you are, you can always find family in CDI.
Eden Kayser:
What change do you want to see in the world?
Tavon Wilson:
I wish that we could all get along with each other, not just like Black and Whites, but like everybody in general, we all are just one human species and we’re fighting each other and killing the earth, and more opportunities for people like us too, especially like career wise people who struggle with going to school, people who struggled in school and now don’t have the resources to try to get their career going anymore, you know, not going to school and stuff.
Julian Bond:
Yeah, it’s always like a sad thing when it keeps on happening almost every single year, and like some years are better than other years, and even though we like to talk about the years that were good, but even though sometimes it kind of sad when we talk about the years have been bad for the majority of us and a whole lot of us here, the environments that we live in especially, and I really hope it could get better even though I wish it could hopefully sooner or later it would definitely get better for everyone in here.
Kaylee Hudson:
There’s a lot of unsafety in the world right now, particularly outside of the US, and in the US. We have it a lot better here than a lot of people across the world, which is sad when you think about it because there’s a lot of danger here. But we just want to exist and be in our communities. We just want to live and be able to be safe and not have to be fearful for our safety.
Nika Anderson:
I want to feel safe, and I want to feel like an equal when I’m playing with the big boys. I don’t want to feel like I don’t belong. I want to feel like everybody can belong and everybody can chill with each other and not feel like it’s a serious competition between everybody else. I just think it’s just nice to feel like you’re in a community and you’re safe and you feel wanted and you feel respected.
Bryce Feibus:
I would like to see more freedom of choice given to people and allowance of personal freedom to integrate back in the 1600s and 1700s there were pirates, and those were just people who were searching to be free from the government, and a lot of those were just queer people, you can look it up. Queer people have existed for hundreds of years and have been dealing with persecution for hundreds of years, and honestly, it’s about time that some personal freedoms be given, and people are just allowed to do what they want. After all, we’re not harming anyone else, we’re just being ourselves.
Char Larson:
Leave us alone. We’re not doing you anything in any harm. We’re not doing anything to you. We just want to be ourselves and unapologetically so.
Guinevere Downey:
I just want to see more love. Love thy neighbor, we’re your neighbors.
Natasha Sonenshine:
I Definitely want to see a day where we can all live together in harmony and maybe not base all our perceptions of different groups based on stereotypes. I feel like beyond the stereotypes, there is a beautiful culture in every one of us, whether that you be from India. China, Korea, Japan, Kazakhstan. I feel like there’s a lot deeper of a culture that I feel should be learned about.
Madison Wan:
I think we’re just so used to assumptions that just block our way into knowing a person. I have this friend from my old school, and she told me that she’s from China but was adopted and she looks entirely Chinese, but it turns out she was Jewish as well, and I never knew that that was a combination, but it’s just because of what I was assuming and it’s great to know that I have a variety of people that are combos of every kind of aspect of life which is awesome.
Zoe Feil:
When it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, I want colleges and different institutions to be able to provide more for their minority students or staff and be able to have higher success rates in those categories. Within the adoption community, I want there to be more visibility in media and in general, more of like a clear understanding on what that means for people.
Blue Bax:
I want insurance to be able to register us as people who get it without constantly trying to fight us. We as physically disabled people are constantly fighting insurance companies and frankly, it’s absurd. Some states are finally starting to see that fact and change it but we’re trying to make it a worldwide thing that this shouldn’t be something we have to fight so hard for our typical rights. For me, as an amputee person, this is just a personal story, we’re constantly fighting the insurance companies for me and my family, to be able to do it. I wanted to get a running blade; they wouldn’t let me. I needed to get a new leg because it’s been a problem, I must wait at least a year, and even then, they’ll still fight me on it.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
I want to see more Black families accepting their neurodiverse children, because that’s a big stigma in the Black community about mental health, neurodiversity, a lot of them don’t understand it, they don’t believe in it, so, I don’t want to see POC and people that look like me struggling growing up because simply because their families don’t understand neurodiversity or don’t want to understand it. So, that’s a change that I want to see because as an older student, I had to figure this out on my own and kind of get here by stepping on my own back. I hope that children in our community have it way easier than what we kind of have going on.
Tavon Wilson:
Push through the hardship.
Ryan Sanchez:
I want to see everybody get treated equal, everybody, no matter what the endeavor is, no matter what circumstance it is, if it’s a heated tension between two people, it doesn’t matter what race they are because usually a lot of people bring race into it nowadays, and I usually just want to see people unite and be equal together like they’re doing it in sports, like for example, in baseball, Major League Baseball, there’s more players getting along nowadays than there was back in the day. It’s more unified and no matter what race they are, American, White, Hispanic, Black, what have you? I just want to see that for the world, I would love to see people thrive as one instead of fighting about it because if we fight about everything, we’re not getting anything done at the end of the day. We’re just fighting ourselves at that point because who are we really fighting for at the end of the day, if you’re just yelling at someone? If you’re getting into a fight with somebody and you’re just yelling at someone, there’s really no point in doing that. I’d prefer for people to talk it out. I prefer for people to unite as one and just to unite on one common interest, whether it’s a common interest or if it’s common behavior, whatever the similarity is doesn’t matter. I believe everybody should be treated as equal and everybody should be treated as one, and I think equality in the world nowadays has had a bit of a problem with the way it’s been orchestrated, especially by society, because society has been very, very cruel to a lot of people with the interactions that they have with people, usually because of the differences of how they are as people coming from different cultures. But my vision is that people can unite over one banner but share their cultures together and allow them to have a voice in what they say to one another.
Nailah Quail-Parker:
I think that’s the change that most of us want to see is just not having to go through the hardships that certain minorities and genders and sexualities must go through.
Madison Perkins:
I mean, the world must change in so many ways for us to fully get to our goal, which is the equality thing. But I think we’re a long way from that. I think there needs to be a lot more done. That’s the biggest thing is seeing everyone as equal ideally would be amazing. Are we going to get there? I don’t know. It’s going to take a long time.
Nika Anderson:
The Center for Women and Gender, it’s doing something. It’s small, but it counts as a really big thing.
Madison Perkins:
Yeah, we’re just taking the steps to get there one day. One day at a time.
Guinevere Downey:
I want to say that it is getting better, a conversation like this, we could not have had ten years ago. This is not a conversation that would have been put on the radio like this by a student group. The fact that this is so normalized that we’re all here in the studio right now recording this and we’re not doing it in any kind of secret fashion, that’s a huge change from when I was in high school, when I was in middle school, when I was younger.
Ian McCrory:
When I started college in the year of 2017, this did not exist in a lot of places. It was either just barely starting or something that was not talked about at all on most college campuses. So having not only just an entire Center staffed by amazing people, but also having the ability to talk about being a Center, would not have happened even 5-6 years ago.
Kaylee Hudson:
One thing we do have to remember though, is that change is happening here, and that’s important, but there are places in the world where that change is not happening. There are countries where people cannot be themselves legally, there are countries where people even face the death penalty. That’s something that we need to be aware of.
Eden Kayser:
Is there anything else you’d like to share about yourself or your community?
Blue Bax:
Honestly, just about myself, respect the pronouns.
Guinevere Downey:
The Stonewall Center is open to all and is open from 8:00pm to 10:00pm every weekday in the basement of Frost Hall, and on Thursdays we have programming in the Stone Hall Coffee House.
Bryce Feibus:
The Center is also open from 1:00pm to 4:00pm on Saturdays.
Yael Schwartz:
We are open on Sundays from 1:00pm to 3:00pm and Mondays from 8:00pm to 10:00pm, and otherwise it is also a space that people are welcome to use, to pray, to have tech studies. So, contact Mark Thurman, contact me, Yael Schwarz.
Natasha Sonenshine:
Last semester was my first semester in Landmark, and I immediately started working with CDI. I started in Forever Family, and I also became a volunteer at Stonewall, but I also, as of the past few years I’ve been reconnecting with my Asian heritage as I was adopted, so I wanted to learn more about my Asian heritage. Basically, I brought up the idea to a couple other staff at CDI from the Women and Gender Center, a few from Stonewall, a few from Forever Family, and I basically was like, “hey, what if we started an Asian community club?” So, I went to one of my friends on campus. I talked to Mark Thurman first and he told me this is what you must do to become a club on campus, and I basically found a few Asian students, my friend Adam, we went to Mark, and we started the Asian Community Club. We had our first event, which was a screening of the film, Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was a success. We drew 25 people from the Landmark community to show up to that event and it was a strong start for a club on campus.
Madison Wan:
I remember the room for the showing of that and it was just packed, and I’m like, wow, this club is going to go to places, because my past college before we had a lot of Asian related clubs and it was one of the biggest types of the clubs and activities on campus, and I could just see that for Landmark especially.
Zoe Feil:
The adoption community and the foster care community, they’re both very strong communities. It’s important for people to be able to connect with other students and other people who have had similar experiences and differing experiences. Going to kind of change or reframe a little bit of the Centers in the way I talked about earlier, but also Forever Family is also for students who have not had this experience, to learn about the experience, the intention is you never really know if you want to adopt kids in the future or be a foster parent, and so this is a way for people to also gain insight to our community. I think communication is the big factor here.
Madison Perkins:
No matter who you are, come say hi. We’re down there Monday to Friday, 8:00pm to 10:00pm. We have our main programs on Wednesdays and on Saturdays, we’re open 1:00pm to 4:00pm. So just come by, stop, say hi. Doesn’t matter how you identify, just come. It’s healthy for us to see who our allies are. That’s the biggest thing and we need some allies on this campus so, come on in.
Ryan Sanchez:
One thing I would like to share with the community, and this is coming from a guy who’s been through the ringer of hardships and everlasting sorrow that I thought was everlasting, but it didn’t because I found a happy, haven out of it. No matter what anyone goes through, no matter who anyone deals with or whatever problems they have, we’re all equal at the end of the day. Just because we have a different skin tone or a different blood type or different ethnicity or religion doesn’t make us different. We’re all the same person. We’re all humans at the end of the day, we should treat each other with equal respect, and we should treat each other with equal amounts of love because that’s what I was taught. I started playing baseball when I was five years old. The first thing that I was taught about, and this applies to the real world too, is about respect for one another and respecting one another has been a major, major, major trait for me in my life. I consider myself as probably one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet. Yeah, a lot of people say that nowadays because a lot of people wear a mask and they always profess themselves as something that they’re not, but when comes to me, I’m all about respecting people. I’m all about bringing people together and I’m all about succeeding at what I do, not only in Pa’ Lante, but also on the baseball field. I am very passionate about what I do, and I want to let everybody know, no matter the hardship, no matter what you’re going through, you can achieve anything in life, no matter what you are, who you are, what you look like or what your skin tone is.
Eden Kayser:
Thank you for listening and thank you to the CDI student leaders for sharing your voices on the radio. For more content like this, tune in to wlmc.landmark.edu on October sixth for World College Radio Day, where we’ll bring you live content for 24 hours on this special event. Follow WLMC Landmark College Radio on Facebook, Instagram, and X for live updates during this year’s events. This is station manager Eden Kayser signing off.
