AARON MCPHERSON

Social Justice and Inclusion

 

Category: Foundational

 

Activities: 

• “Understand how one is affected by and participates in maintaining systems of oppression, privilege, and power” (p. 30)

  • Through CSP 6035, Multicultural Competency in Student Affairs, I was able to develop a better understanding about how students are affected by systems of oppression, privilege and power specifically as they relate to education.  In this course, I was able to identify areas of privilege that contributed to these systems and learn about how systems of oppression affect marginalized groups in education in the K-12 pipeline.  The book Diversity in American Higher Education was critical to developing my understanding of how students from marginalized backgrounds are impacted by access to resources.

• “Connect and build meaningful relationships with others while recognizing the multiple, intersecting identities, perspectives, and developmental differences people hold” (p. 30)

  • For Theory and Assessment of College Student Development I chose to do my immersion project on Low-Income students.  This population of students was challenging because they are hard to reach because many students do not want to identify as a member of this group or do not recognize they are a member of this group.  This lead to my reflection on how students think about income in building relationships and how that connects to other aspects of identity.  During the project I interviewed several students from varying racial backgrounds.  The student of color I interviewed was more likely to connect their low income status to their race than was the White student, while the White student had trouble grasping understanding what it meant to be low income even though they were.  This project helped me understand how to navigate relationships with people from varying, intersecting identities.

 

Reference 

ACPA & NASPA (2015).  Professional competency areas for student affairs practitioners.  Washington, DC: Authors.