As part of my job working for Admission this summer, I’m making videos. Recently I’ve embarked on a video hoping to spotlight the engagement with diversity on the Puget Sound campus.
Today I had coffee with the lovely Czarina Ramsay. For those students who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Czarina or seeing her facilitate a campus program, she is the Director of Multicultural Student Services. Czarina works with U
niversity departments like MCSS, SSSJ (Spirituality, Service, and Social Justice), she works with students, with faculty, and with campus clubs as a coordinator, a facilitator, and a friend.
Czarina and I talked today for instance about the Student Diversity Center. For those of you who haven’t heard of or interacted with the SDC yet – in Czarina’s words – the SDC is a “hub” on campus. A safe space for individuals and allies of sensitive identity-groups affected by , gender, ethnic background, faith, age, ability, sexual identity and more.
In my video, I plan to focus primarily on the SDC, and the way it works to create a network of unity and support available to the entire campus. The Center
itself is located in a house of it’s own across from Diversions Cafe on 15th Street. It is an open space where you can often find students gathering, engaging in discussion, studying, making art, or just hanging out. During the school-year Student Diversity Center clubs have regular weekly meetings from 5-10pm. These can range from open discussion, open-attendence meetings meant to foster meaningful conversation, to serious support and allyship meetings between members and friends. The SDC works in all these ways to basically house and support different student clubs, and connect them with the larger Puget Sound, and Tacoma community. Through this, groups like APASU (The Asian and Pacific-American Student Union), Q&A (Queer & Allies for Advocacy), and VAVA (The Vulva Anti-Violence Alliance), can find commonalities, and intersections to mutually support eachother.
In Admission we are often asked what “one thing” incoming students or interested students wouldn’t know about campus, that they should know about.Well that, in my opinion, is the Student Diversity Center. And people like Czarina Ramsay. They are the people who keep this campus vibrant, refreshing, considerate, and conscientious. If you’d like to reach out to Czarina or any of the wonderful MCSS staff, their offices are on the second floor of Wheelock Student Center, and their doors are always open.
Find out more:
Multicultural Student Services Resource Page