For four years, Tabias Wilson has carved out spaces within the chatter of campus dialogue to make room for conversations about underrepresented identities - conversations that empower marginalized people across campus to develop a voice that demands attention.
As a black man growing up in Kansas, Wilson was familiar with overt racism, but he was unprepared for Boston's subtler version. During finals week his freshman year, Wilson was working the overnight shift at Eaton Hall. When he left late at night, he was stopped by a Tufts University Police Department officer who didn't think that Wilson looked like a Tufts student. The officer asked for his Tufts ID, and Wilson was forced to stand outside for 10 minutes while the officer tried to confirm his identity.
"I had to give him a driver's license to validate the fact that my Tufts ID was, in fact, a real ID," Wilson said. "That was one of the first interactions I had had with that type of racism at Tufts."
Disillusioned early on, Wilson took a first stab at bettering the experience for students of color at Tufts by running for a seat on the Tufts Community Union Senate and serving as the chair of the Culture, Ethnicity and Community Affairs Committee.
"I wrote the bylaws and created what is now the diversity officer on Senate. I [also] wrote the referendum for giving community reps the right to vote ... and, of course, the basic resolution for Africana studies," he said.
Wilson left the Senate his sophomore year, feeling as though he'd accomplished what he wanted. He pursued his activism through other channels - for example, as president of the Pan African Alliance.
"My tenure as president was all about getting Africana studies agreed to and getting it off the ground," Wilson said.
Although an Africana studies major was eventually pushed through, getting the administration to listen to students when he first arrived at Tufts was nearly impossible, whereas now they're much more open to students' input, Wilson said. From 2011's April Open House demonstration to the occupation of Ballou Hall later that year, Wilson says the administration learned to listen.
"They started listening to us because, at that point, they knew there were very few things that we wouldn't do to get our message across and to be heard," he said.
Much of Wilson's activism has involved community outreach and organization at the intersection of race and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. Intersectionality - the idea that disenfranchised people's many identities combine and inform a unique experience - is at the heart of Wilson's activism. He helped establish Queer Students of Color and Allies and conducted outreach between Tufts' LGBT, black and Hispanic organizations and Boston's Hispanic Black Gay Coalition.
In his work with the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, Wilson helped publish a paper advising against the passage of Massachusetts' then-pending "three strikes" law.
"[I am proudest of being able] to organize in communities ...with people of color and the NAACP... as well as with legal scholars at Harvard Law, and to get this report out there that dissuaded people in the legislature from voting for this law," Wilson said.
Wilson capped off his college experience with an invitation to the White House to spend the day with the vice president and the nation's top young LGBT leaders. Now, Wilson plans to direct his education and experiences to becoming a federal judge. He sees the bench as the place from which he can effect the most change, asserting that the rulings judges make bring about new laws and, therefore, new meanings.
