Social justice has been a priority in my life since my first graduate school experience at Boston University from 2007-2010. Since then, I have participated in workshops on various social justice topics regularly. The first one was a weekend conference on immigration justice, which I attended in 2008. During my time at BU, I interrogated my own whiteness and white privilege, and continue to do so by engaging in online and in-person racial justice conversations. One example is the DONUTS workshop I attended that the Northeastern University Social Justice Resource Center provided in winter 2018. DONUTS stands for “Deconstructing Oppression N’ Unpacking whiTe Supremacy.” I have also participated in direct actions such as protests, pickets, boycotts, canvassing, and phone banking. Notably, I helped to lead a dance protest of the Hyatt Regency Boston during Pride Week 2010 to highlight its unjust treatment of its housekeepers to out-of-town guests. Four years later, Hyatt paid $1 million to those housekeepers (Johnston, 2014). Other successful campaigns in which I participated include the 2013 Cambridge Advocates for a Common Toilet campaign to provide public restrooms to homeless residents of Cambridge (Furigay, 2016), and the fall 2018 Yes on 3 campaign to protect civil rights of transgender persons in Massachusetts.

In my student affairs practice, I hope to work with students from disadvantaged backgrounds, but especially students of color, to help them succeed in college. The pull toward student success work is one and the same with my passion for social justice. I do not seek just “any job” that allows me to do social justice work on the side. I want a job where I can enact my values of true equality and respect for human dignity in my day-to-day work.

The artifact that best demonstrates my learning in the SJI competency area is a training I created during the year I was President of CAUSE Justice, the social justice student organization at BU School of Theology. During the winter of 2010, I created a training on Intimate Partner Violence for my peers to learn about how to pastorally respond to instances of IPV in their congregations. A friend of mine who had done her social work internship that year at the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) collaborated with me to create the handout packet (attached as a PDF). In our training, we explained why IPV is a social justice issue, and how religious leaders have traditionally responded by sending abused partners back to their abusers. We emphasized the pervasiveness of IPV, explained why pastors will likely encounter it multiple times in their careers, and proposed alternate responses. An important part of responsible helping is creating a safety plan. We included this in the handout and reviewed steps typically used in safety plans. We also encouraged participants to get to know leaders in their local shelters for IPV survivors (previously known as “battered women’s shelters”) to promptly open lines of communication. Finally, we discussed teaching healthy relationship skills to teenagers during religious activities such as youth group meetings. Our workshop was a success, as over 50 people attended and actively engaged with the content.

Throughout my life, I plan to continue learning about justice issues and expanding my horizons of compassion. I intend to keep working for justice both at work and in my personal life. I hope that in my student affairs practice, I can put this learning to work and benefit both students and staff in the process.