Dean of Arts and Sciences Joanne Berger−Sweeney in June announced in an email to faculty members the creation of a new Office of Intercultural and Social Identities Programming (ISIP), and named Katrina Moore, who heads the Africana Center, as its first director.
The newly created ISIP aims to improve the Tufts experience for all students and connect them to available resources on campus, according to Moore.
"This new office was created to serve as a gap for students who may not have made a connection to a center, and we want to make sure that all students feel included in everything that is available on this campus and take advantage of all the campus has to offer," Moore told the Daily.
The office will focus its attention on issues of identity, inclusion and social justice, according to Moore.
"ISIP will strengthen our ability to address [pertinent identity] issues and will work broadly to ensure the inclusion and equal participation of all students within the Tufts community — particularly those with historically marginalized identities," she said in a Sept. 8 email to members of the Africana Center.
"Appropriately for Tufts, the new office will engage students through the lens of social−justice education, recognizing that we all have multiple identities influenced by perceived race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and religion," she continued in the email.
Berger−Sweeney in her email also announced a restructuring of the Group of Six, a group of culture centers at Tufts. The centers will now report directly to the dean of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies, and the position of ISIP director will rotate every two years among the center directors, according to the email. Moore will remain in her position as director of the Africana Center in addition to taking on her new post.
The mission statement of the new office remains unformulated at this point and the specific duties it will discharge remain unclear, but Moore stressed that promoting inclusion will be a central goal. She also expressed confidence that the office would be successful in providing both emotional and academic support to students.
"I want all Tufts students to know that [the deans and faculty] have a real commitment to making sure students feel included," Moore said. "I'm hopeful students will start to feel like we're putting action behind our words."
Moore will work with the next dean of Undergraduate and Graduate Studies — a search is currently underway for a permanent replacement for Paul Stanton, who is serving in the interim — to determine the ISIP's specific role. Moore hopes this mission−defining process will be completed by the end of the semester.
"The new dean of undergraduate and graduate students will work closely with Katrina to continue this work," Stanton said.
The title of the office was intentionally kept vague in order to avoid imposing any inferred boundaries, according to Stanton.
"The title… is broad to enhance the quality of life for more students than the constituencies of the six centers," he said. "Dean Berger−Sweeney and Dean Linda Abriola of the School of Engineering have set a priority on improving the quality of the curricular and co−curricular experience for students in their schools."
Director of the International Center Jane Etish−Andrews noted the Group of Six's enthusiasm about the creation of the new office.
"It's a new opportunity, and we're all excited to be a part of it," Etish−Andrews said.
Still, the success of the new office will be determined by the extent to which it is able to reach out to the larger Tufts community, according to senior Amanda Yepez, a peer leader at the Latino Center.
"I feel like just because you make an office or something doesn't mean it's going to fix anything," Yepez said. "They're just all fancy words to mask the fact that nothing is going to happen. The only people it will help are those who are already experiencing it. The problem is reaching out to those who are not involved and do not want to be involved. They're not reaching out to the majority of Tufts students who don't know and don't care about issues that affect other students."
