Student Forum Sheds Light on Privilege

The Exonian Encounter Committee hosted an interactive event last weekend called “We the Privileged” to help Exonians understand and recognize unearned privileges that can often be overlooked. The event centered around visual activities and group discussions that club members led for the Exonians in attendance.

Exonian Encounters has been working since the spring of 2012 to, as their mission states, “establish and sustain community events that encourage all of us to embrace our differences, challenge our preconceptions and foster connections with others in a respectful environment.”

After an introductory game of “rock, paper, scissors,” participants lined up on a single piece of tape. This activity was inspired by a video that committee members watched on Buzzfeed. Physical Education instructor Olutoyin Augustus-Ikwuakor, the advisor of the committee, read statements from a list. After each statement, students who identified with the sentence took a step back or forward, based on each situation. By the end of the exercise, the students dispersed around the room created a visual representation of the disparities in privilege.

“The room was full, but the group of students who went were pretty like minded. I wish there was a way to involve even more students from the community.”

After the activity, students were broken up into groups of about eight for discussion to reflect on aspects of privilege. Committee members provided lists of the statements used in the activity for each group to discuss.

Augustus-Ikwuakor said the post-activity discussions were vital for the goal of the committee: sharing everyone’s story. “It is always important for us to have conversations after each exercise because much of the learning comes when we actively engage with each other,” she said.

The group decided to focus on privilege to highlight the significance it plays in positive and negative experiences, and also to bring awareness to who has access to privilege in American culture. “America is systematically oppressive to many groups and individuals. When we recognize that many people are unjustly disadvantaged we can begin to act responsibly in making change happen,” Augustus-Ikwuakor said.

The group focused specifically on unearned privileges. The committee stressed that although individuals can and have earned many privileges, there are significant unearned privileges and disadvantages that impact one’s ability and rate of success.

“Unearned privileges propel some forward while others either remain where they are or regress due to oppression,” Augustus-Ikwuakor said.

In creating the event, the committee hoped not to shame people with the privileges they had not realized,

but to instead foster discussion and provoke changes in both individuals and the school community.

Senior and member of the committee Jade Moses explained that “our hope was not to guilt people with their privileges, but to leave them with the impression that they can use their privilege to help others in more disadvantaged positions.”

Upper Chris Agard, another member of the committee, thought the event was a success. “We did an effective job of showing people that privilege extends beyond socioeconomic class and race,” he said.

Many students were positively affected by the event because of its success in revealing disparities, privileges and disadvantages previously brushed aside.

Lower Dolapo Adedokun enjoyed the interactive experience because the statements opened his eyes to small privileges that he had not recognized. “Things I don’t really think about, that I take for granted, are privileges that I never even realized I had,” he said.

However, Adedokun thought that the group should have addressed the idea that not all privileges or disadvantages are “worth the same,” and that for different people, the effect may be more or less. Because the distance for each step in the activity was the same, the weight of each specific privilege was not addressed.

Moses acknowledged this, but said that because it was the first event of this nature, the committee did not want to fit in a layer of weight. She said it is “tricky” to define the dimensions of privilege.

For both the organizers and the participants, the main concern was the attendance of the event. Although enough students participated, the group was mostly female and students of color. Only one white male attended the event.

“The room was full, but the group of students who went were pretty like minded,” senior Emma Kim said. “I wish there was a way to involve even more students from the community.”

Lower Jaynee Anaya agreed, noting that all of the people attending the event had been interested in acknowledging privilege. “I think this type of exercise should carry on to the people who heard of this event and decided not to attend,” Anaya said.

Augustus-Ikwuakor said that there is a large significance in the fact that only certain demographics will attend these types of events. “Do I dare to say it’s because [those who don’t attend] are privileged enough to not have to be burdened with these issues?” she asked. “I hope we can reframe our minds to see that these issues are human issues that affect all of us.”

Some believe that students are driven away by conversations of privilege because of a fear of being attacked. “Often times, even the word ‘privilege’ just makes people steer away because it invokes pictures of angry activists ranting, but our event did not force anyone to step forward or backward in the privilege walk. It was all self-determined,” upper and committee member Kelly Lew said.

However, within the smaller demographic scope of those who came, the event shed light on many gaps in levels of privilege. “It was striking that, even within that small group of people with many commonalities, there were large differences in their self-determined privileges,” Lew said.

Upper Sally Ma agreed. “I was quite surprised at the end by the amount of division within the same race,” she said. “Though of the same ethnicity, some could be way ahead, while others were among those at the very back.”

Exonian Encounters is scheduled to do the same event for MLK Day, and Agard hoped that it will gain even more traction there. “This is just the beginning of a more informed and comprehensive dialogue on the topic of privilege and I am very excited to see where we go from here,” Agard said.