Campus peer education group Students Promoting Equality Awareness and Compassion (SPEAC) is continuing its work this semester on an effort designed to highlight diversity on campus called the Tufts Identity Project.
The project includes Tufts students' responses to the questions "Who are you?" and "How do other people perceive you?" accompanied by their pictures, according to Associate Dean of Students and SPEAC Coordinator Marisel Perez.
The Tufts Identity Project is modeled after The Hapa Project, a work by artist Kip Fulbeck, according to SPEAC member Audrey Wilson, a junior.
Fulbeck photographed people of half−Pacific Islander descent, also called Hapa, and asked participants to describe their identities. He then compiled the photos and responses online.
SPEAC, formerly known as BEAT Bias and rebranded in 2010 to reflect the group's proactive new approach, aims to start conversations about incidents of bias and intolerance on campus through education and events. Such incidents can be reported online on WebCenter.
"What we want to do, as a group, is create a safe space on campus to have these kinds of conversations about intolerance," Perez said.
SPEAC comprises half of the university's Bias Response Team; an Administrative Support Team that includes Chief of Staff in the President's Office Michael Baenen, Director of Diversity Education and Development Margery Davies and Perez makes up the other half.
The project went through a pilot period last semester, according to Wilson.
Last semester, the group collected 130 photos and responses to the question, "Who are you?" SPEAC added the second question, "How do other people perceive you?" this semester.
SPEAC has collected approximately 75 responses this semester, according to SPEAC member Kate Salwen, a senior. The group has set up tables in Dewick at advertised times to collect student responses, she said.
Members hope to eventually put responses and photos online, Wilson added.
Having the responses online would help make the conversation about diversity more widespread, Perez noted.
"The electronic environment is very powerful because other folks — maybe students who are coming to Tufts [and] students who are here — can relate to the expression and self−identification of the students that are here now," she said.
Salwen hopes the project will help inspire discussions about personal social identity at Tufts.
"I think that students at Tufts are generally very intelligent people and are people who want to learn and grow, but these conversations about identities are so personal, that they're very difficult conversations to have, no matter how interested you are," Salwen said.
"The more we get out there and are able to create a safe space to have these conversations, the more they'll happen, and the more we'll be able to understand each other as people," she said.
Unlike The Hapa Project, the Tufts effort does not aim to focus specifically on ethnic diversity, but rather every aspect of students' identities, Wilson said.
"Rather than talking specifically about ethnicity … it would be good for people to be able to claim their own identity without any boundaries," she said.
"This project really seeks to shed light upon the diversity of people, not only through race or ethnicity or gender, but also who they are and how they think," SPEAC graduate intern Arielle Levy (LA '11) said.
The project will help demonstrate all types of diversity within the student body, according to Wilson.
"It has a lot of potential and is a really valuable opportunity to allow the Tufts students to express themselves individually and as a collective. You can see how unique we are," she said.
