By Hina Yu, The Seattle Medium
Dorm rooms on the 8th floor of Lander Hall on the UW ‘s Seattle campus will be set aside by Fall 2024 for Black students.
Known as “affinity housing,” the goal is to provide a welcoming environment for students who want to connect in culture and scholarship with other Black-identifying students. An Instagram post in late March 2024, UW’s Housing & Food Services announced the new housing option, which will be available to 125 residents.
Director of Residential Life Vicki Vanderwerf at the University of Washington said in an email that while she was not at the university when the program was first requested by students, “I do know the idea was first proposed last academic year.”
Vanderwerf continued: “The program was requested by students with the goal of building community and a sense of belonging for UW students. Once UW Residential Life staff explored options for the program, partnerships were created across campus to design the program.”
Housing & Food Services created partnerships with the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity (OMA&D), the Black Student Commission (BSC) and the Black Student Union (BSU) to ensure they could collaborate to create a welcoming space for Black students.
Magdalena Fonseca, director of the Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center, was invited to represent OMA&D, which supports students who are first-generation college students, or who come from historically marginalized communities. OMA&D provides academic counseling and constructive support for students.
“It was a natural idea to invite the OMA&D staff to help inform what college students are going through, specifically Black students on campus,” Fonseca said. “That’s how I got invited to be a part of the conversation, so that I can add a perspective from a professional, educational standpoint.”
Fonseca said then-undergraduate Calen Garrett, who had experience as a resident adviser in campus dorms for a year and an assistant resident director for two years, first brought up the idea of Black affinity housing. Garrett was also the BSC director of ASUW from 2022 to 2023.
Fonseca says that BSU and BSC were very involved in the process for the Black affinity housing. “The voices of students, particularly Black students, were always considered and at the forefront when creating the space.
“As an assisted resident director as well as the BSC director last year, I think Calen got a really good perspective of the experience of Black students on campus, in a variety of different spaces, and, in particular, the residential halls,” Fonseca explained.
“He came up with a Living Learning Community (LLC) proposal in the residential halls, working alongside members of the BSC and forwarded that proposal to folks in the residential halls and began to have those conversations of possibly creating a Black affinity housing community.”
An LLC is an interest-based community in residential halls that attracts students with similar career aspirations. Housing & Food Services on campus offers a total of six LLCs that incoming and returning students can choose from when they submit their housing application for the upcoming academic year. The six LLCs are art, business, engineering, global experience, honors and pre-health sciences.
Vanderwerf said student input and perspective was critical throughout the process of creating the Black affinity housing.
Fonseca added: “There aren’t a lot of spaces where Black students can feel safe and feel like they can find others that look like them or share similar cultural experiences and backgrounds. Creating a space in the residential halls was really important.”
Fonseca said they had to consider barriers when planning for Black affinity housing.
“You’re going to get community members from outside the university that have a perspective that creating a specific affinity housing group might be seen as segregation. A lot of people are supportive, but that doesn’t mean everyone is.”
Educating people about this, she said, isn’t something to fear, “but something to embrace. That is very difficult.”
Though there has been minimal negative pushback from current students and none from the larger Seattle community, Fonseca expects questions. “We have prepared a frequently asked questions page and will also be training RAs and HFS staff over the summer to be able to field those questions.”
Fonseca is certain that creating Black affinity housing at UW is one step towards an inclusive environment for Black students. “As more and more students start to spread the word that this exists on campus, that is what is going to bring more students to consider UW as a college choice.”
Vanderwerf added that an expansion of the Black affinity housing is possible if demand for it rises in the future. “If students are interested in other programs, this is definitely something we would want to explore.”
