In the summer of 2020, the Black Laurentian Initiative asked St. Lawrence University, with the help from other students, to take advantage of a political climate and to jump-start antiracist and social justice activism all over the campus. Students also brought changes to the WORD Studio, a student resource center assisting students with writing, oral presentations, research, and design.
Agustín Toledo ‘23, a Music major contemplating a Spanish major, presented on “linguistic justice” at a conference after his first semester as a WORD Studio tutor at St. Lawrence in Fall 2020. Under the mentorship of Lucia Pawlowski, Teal Borden ‘22, an English major, partnered with Agustín, applied for, and received the Black Laurentian Initiative Racial Justice and Equity Grant (BLIJE) to explore linguistic justice and possible implementations of this within the WORD Studio. Projects were happening across campus, but few sought to implement systematic change like theirs.
Early in their process, Borden and Toledo realized they need to take time to learn about anti-racism within the English language and writing, before they could think about writing a paper about it. The research would also allow them to make the project work in a meaningful and effective way. Teal expressed that at the beginning of the summer of 2021, after receiving the BLIJE, “We started off with all these big ideas, and then we realized that we should first take time to educate ourselves.” Although she understands this process takes time, it is frustrating to move slowly. She said, “We had to step back and see what we could tangibly do in the time that we have.”
During the summer, they prepared all the focus groups that were being conducted throughout the Fall 2021 semester. The purpose of the focus groups was to get an understanding of experiences that students have had with linguistic injustice. Agustín voiced, “Language goes over your head when you’re talking about racism.” Acceptance of the variety that exists within the English language is, according to him, going to take intentional effort. Working to define terms such as linguistic justice for the Studio is pioneering new territory. “We are building everything as we go,” he said. “It is difficult to get workshops on grading writing and things like that mandatory, and the people who would be less likely to go to these voluntary workshops are the ones that probably need it the most.”
Agustín defined linguistic justice as “giving students the right to use their language and also make sure that no one is discriminated against because of their language.” He continued , “That is why we are doing the focus groups and the interviews, to see what is going on and what there is to do. There are power dynamics between languages and language varieties… and also considering the way that languages were born, the way that language variety was born. African American vernacular English, for example, is like black history in the US, that is slavery in the US, that is resistance. So, not only not honoring that but also discriminating against that language, it is as if asking individuals to change their identity.”
An objective for the WORD Studio for the Fall 2021 semester was to edit the WORD studio’s mission statement to reflect the values of anti-racism within the English language and their interaction with students and their writing.
It is important to understand the importance of the language of mission statements in departments like this because it dictates the behavior of the studio and the programming that comes out of the Studio.
Borden and Toledo talked about how professors do not realize that some of the comments that they put on students’ papers are racist. They are currently working on creating workshops that bridge beyond the community of WORD Studio tutors, seeking to provide workshops for students and professors in the future. Teal posed the questions, “How can we be honoring people in whatever form of English is comfortable to them to get meaning out? And how can we start putting these ideas in the heads of other people across the university to accept these various forms and accept how people choose to present their ideas?” Only accepting standard written English as being the only “right form of English” perpetuates harmful racist behavior, and the group work to eradicate such behaviors.
Borden expressed that she felt a slight frustration, “You want to fix it all, but you have to take the small steps…Take a step back and see what we could tangibly do in the time that we had.” Since they pioneered new territory, Borden and Toledo highlighted the necessity to have the collaborative efforts of the students, which they sought to gain by working with student groups who are already or want to engage in work of anti-racism. They have created a committee to work with student organizations that are working on anti-racist initiatives. Although this is an initiative that was started by students, WORD Studio Director Pawlowski is in great support of this and plans to continue this work beyond the time that the two students are at SLU.