The College Fix

‘Union of Mixed Students’ serves around 100 members

Undergraduates at Harvard University recently formed a council of mixed-race students, the first of its kind on the historic campus.

Since beginning recruitment last week, the Union of Mixed Students “has attracted plenty of immediate interest, and its membership list now includes more than 100 students.” The group founders “want the organization to serve as an inclusive space for all identities shaped by the needs and ideas of its members,” The Harvard Crimson reports.

The paper reports that one of the founders “[saw] mixed race organizations at other colleges, and…wanted to replicate the same experience at Harvard, which did not have a mixed race group on campus.”

From the report:

[Founder Iris] Feldman said she was motivated to create the union to provide a space for people who felt their identity did not fall into just one of Harvard’s cultural organizations.

“While you are a part of these two communities, there is a unique, separate, mixed identity that a lot of people experience,” Feldman said. “I want to make sure that we can acknowledge that and give people the space to explore what that means and the unique challenges and cool things that you have from that.”

[Founder Antonia] Scott said the group will allow mixed students from a wide variety of backgrounds to bond over their mutual experiences and create a supportive network.

“Even when we have different experiences, it’s just good to know that there are other people having similar struggles that you can kind of figure stuff out with,” Scott said.

The group will “hold both informal and formal discussions within the organization and also create a communal resource base for articles pertaining to the identities of mixed race people,” according to the founders.

Read the whole report here.

MORE: White professor: It’s racist for whites to have mixed-race children

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