A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

Things you should know:

Believe it or not, voting happens in a few very short weeks. Early voting begins November 3rd. The presidential election is important, but so are the 469 Congressional seats up for re-election! That’s a lot! Stay informed and get there to vote!

As we continue to track the water protectors in North Dakota, there are other ways to support them in their endeavors to save our planet! Check out 5 Ways to Support Water Protectors in Standing Rock.

Article of the Week:

Even though Critical Social Justice is over, I’m still thinking about how we can make our activist spaces more accessible. This week I read 6 Ways Your Social Justice Activism Might Be Ableist on Everyday Feminism.

My good friend Dan, and Women’s Center student staff member wanted to share what he was reading this week. Check out ‘What They Really Mean When They Say They’re Not Voting‘.

UMBC Happenings:

The Fatness in Focus November Roundtable is coming up. Be sure to check out the event flyer and join us on November 30th in the Women’s Center.

Song of the Week:

I’ve been listening to really great music recently, and I want to share that with all of you! I know it’s Friday but I have to post a throwback. This week’s song is by Ingrid Michaelson. Check out ‘The Way I Am’! 

Until next week! Stay safe!

A reflection written by Women’s Center director, Jess Myers 

As Critical Social Justice: Home comes to an end today, I can’t help but to think about what is happening at Standing Rock right now where over 100 police with military equipment are advancing on a resistance camp established by Native American water protectors in the path of the proposed $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline (details). My week starting off with me tuning into Democracy Now! to hear reports from water protectors who were arrested over the weekend at a peaceful march after they were confronted by police in riot gear, carrying assault rifles (details).

Then at the CSJ keynote event, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha opened her talk by acknowledging the Susquehannock and Lenape people, whose land UMBC stands on or is nearby. She went on to say that except for the Piscataway, Maryland does not recognize any Nations because, as with many mid Atlantic states, Native people were displaced onto Oklahoma Indian Territory or other places of displacement during colonization in the 1700s. When I lived in Colorado, speakers at events would often start with this land acknowledgment, in fact, some professors even named it in their course syllabi. It has been a long time since I’ve been in a space where this critical history has been acknowledge.

Later in the week, I saw an infograph created by FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture that outlined the scary realities of “Sexual Assault on the Pipeline.”

As we spent the whole week exploring and navigating the complexities of home, I can’t stop thinking about Standing Rock, the water protectors, and what the pipeline will do to the homes and communities of Native American and Indigenous people, specifically the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. We would be remiss if we did not name their cause, efforts, and fight for home this week.

In social justice circles, you’ll often hear people say, “Do the work.” This is a call for us to learn about issues, do self-reflection, and appropriately lend our voice and action to the cause. While I’m still learning about this evolving issue, I wanted to at least share the information I’ve been accessing and provide some resources for where we can keep learning about this critical issue happening right now. Please note, this is not an exhaustive list! As you explore resources, be sure to check out coverage and resources directly created by Native American voices and those that amplify their voices.

• An FAQ on how you can help from Camp of the Sacred Stone
• On Twitter you can follow @NoDAPL and @NativeApprops (just 2 suggestions to get you started!)
• Democracy Now! coverage of resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline
• 3 Things You Need to Know About Indigenous Efforts Against the Dakota Access Pipeline from Everyday Feminism
• Water in Life: Native Groups Push back Against Environmental Racism on Bitch Media
• Donate! To donate to the Legal Defense Fund for Sacred Stone Spirit Camp or help with supplies.

Once again, this is not an exhaustive list. Use this short list to get started and keep clicking on the links for more information and resources!

The Women’s Center at UMBC turns 25 this year! We’re excited to share our important milestone with UMBC’s 50th Anniversary and will be celebrating throughout the year with the rest of campus! We were inspired by Special Collections archival project Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th and decided to do our own digging into the Women’s Center archives. Over the course of the year, we’ll be sharing 25 “Then vs Now” archives to celebrate the origin and evolution of the Women’s Center at UMBC.

It’s been a while since our last post because we were prepping for Critical Social Justice. Consequently, this week we’re featuring the awesome posters + a Prezi presentation student staff put together highlighting the Women’s Center history which was showcased at this week’s Critical Social Justice event addressing diversity and inclusion within higher education.

The posters are hanging up in the Women’s Center right now so stop by to check them out. In the meantime, here’s some photos of the posters Shira and Michael made and the link to Daniel’s Prezi Presentation. Prachi also made a really cool zine about our history that we’ll be adding to the 50th Anniversary time capsule that we’re working to get online. In the meantime, you can pick up a hard copy the next time you visit the Women’s Center.

Shira’s poster explored the dynamics of 1991 – the year the Women’s Center opened

Michael focused his poster on important Women’s Center programs and their evolution of the past 25 years.

Prachi created a multi-page zine documenting the history of the Women’s Center. Here’s just one of the pages.

You can check out Dan’s cool Prezi presentation, Historical Foundations of the Women’s Center at UMBC, that explores the evolution of women’s centers and women’s movements from a holistic perspective which he was then able to connect to the programming and services our specific Women’s Center has offered over the years.

A screen shot of one of Dan’s slides from  Historical Foundations of the Women’s Center at UMBC.

What are the memories you have of the Women’s Center over the years that are meaningful to you? What does the Women’s Center mean to you today? Share your memories and pictures with us in the comment section below!
Stay up-to-date with our 25th anniversary on social media using #UMBCWC25. Share your Women’s Center experiences and memories with the UMBC community using #UMBCWC25 AND #UMBC50!

A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

Things you should know:

Believe it or not, voting happens in a few very short weeks. Early voting begins November 3rd. The presidential election is important, but so are the 469 Congressional seats up for re-election! That’s a lot! Stay informed and get there to vote!

Article of the Week:

We’re only 3 days from Halloween!!! For those that are going out, be safe! Be sure to check out Everyday Feminism’s article “Is Your Halloween Costume Racist?” This is a really cool guide for making sure our costumes are not making fun of or being disrespectful to people of other cultures, religions, races, etc.

UMBC Happenings:

This week was Critical Social Justice! There were a ton of amazing events all pertaining to our theme, ‘Home’. It was an amazing time, especially with our keynote speaker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. If you missed the events, some of them are available to watch on the Critical Social Justice Facebook Page. Even though Critical Social Justice is over, we want to encourage all of you to continue to be critical and cognizant of how UMBC is or isn’t a home to the students, faculty and staff it houses!

Also, the theme of Home is really resonating with many of us in the Women’s Center as we watch and pay attention to what is happening at Standing Rock. We’re working on a round-up of resources we’ll post on the Critical Social Justice blog so you can learn more about the Native American and indigenous people in America, the water protectors, the social justice issues related to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Song of the Week:

I’ve been listening to really great music recently, and I want to share that with all of you! This week’s song is Laputa by Hiatus Kaiyote ft Anderson.Paak.

Until next week! Happy Halloween! 

The Women’s Center’s Roundtable series is underway! On October 20th, we hosted the second of our three-part roundtable “Our Bodies, Ourselves” series. Queer (De)Coded focused on women and queer coding, deconstructing how women and femme individuals utilize and present their bodies in order to appear more or less queer. Queer coding is when individuals hint with their bodies and mannerisms their identity without explicitly stating their sexuality or gender identity.

For this discussion, we invited staff member Elle Trusz, UMBC alum Juliette Seymour, and community member Melissa Smith to begin the roundtable dialogue with their own thoughts and perspectives related to queer coding. Elle opened up the conversation, discussing what it is like to be in relationships that are read as straight but are actually queer. She explained that walking down the street with her “husbutch”- or female spouse- could sometimes be seen by others as a straight couple based upon how both individuals present themselves.

Juliette also had interesting input into what it is like being a queer person who appears straight and cisgendered within their own life. Juliette discussed how their appearance sometimes made it more possible to be in spaces that may or may not be LGBTQIA+ friendly, yet it also felt like taking a step back into the closet. Melissa brought up the different ways her queer embodiment shows up in her workplace and the critical ways she is being present in all of her identities in order to make more space for others like her.

After initial remarks, the discussion turned to what “queer” looks like, who can present as queer, and the intersections that can emerge when facing different personal identities. The discussion of what it looks like to be queer and privileged identities was brought to the table. Elle discussed her privilege as she recounted instances where her queer identity was more protected based upon her whiteness. Melissa discussed her own identity as a black queer person and how the layers of both these identities can be challenging in our heteronormative, white-centric world. The UMBC Outlist became a part of our discussion and the ways in which this list can also send messages of acceptable or not-acceptable queer presentation on campus and in professional settings in general.

A large portion of the conversation turned to religion and queerness. Melissa spoke very candidly about her own conflicts within religion, and the conversation opened up for the audience. Many people shared their own experiences with religion and their individual queer identities.

Overall, the dialogue we shared with each other as a learning community was deep (and only scratching the surface at the same time) and meaningful and can’t be entirely captured in such a short summary. Thanks to our panel members and participants for making Queer (De)Coded a success and creating a conversation around the many ways we embody queer identities within our daily lives.

Don’t Forget, our last roundtable of the semester,Fatness in Focus, will take place on November 30th, at 4pm in The Women’s Center!

Couldn’t make it to this roundtable? No worries! Here are some resources that further delve into the topic of queer coding and embodied queerness.

Staff member Dan Wiley’s piece on queer hair from the Women’s Center’s Blog

Femme- Butch taught privileges, Everyday Feminism  

Comic debunking assumptions about queer femme bodies

Autostraddle article looking at queercrip fashion

Helpful UMBC LGBTQ Online Resources

The UMBC Outlist 

Student Life’s LGBTQ Resources 

UMBC’s LGBTQ Faculty and Staff Association 

Tonight our partners in Student Affairs are hosting Critical Interactions, an interactive program where students will join INTERACT Program peer facilitators to explore how they each make meaning of ‘home.’

But what is INTERACT?

A collaboration between the Division of Student Affairs and the Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication Department, INTERACT aims to provide first-year residential students with specific training in intercultural communication and authenticity.

As a university focused on innovation and ground-breaking research, it is the hope of this collaborative to enhance incoming students’ confidence and competence in diversity and inclusion in order to prepare them for their time at UMBC and beyond.

Critical Interactions will be held tonight (Oct. 24th) from 7:30-9pm in University Center 310. 

For a full list of Critical Social Justice: Home events, click here.

A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

October 20th was the last of the Presidential Debate series. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and soon it’ll be time to vote. While it’s too late to register online, you can register in person (if you live in Maryland) on November 3rd.

Critical Social Justice is NEXT WEEK! Be sure to join us, and our campus partners, during the CSJ events happening from October 24th- 28th. Also, check out our series on the Women’s Center Blog on things you need to know about our Keynote Speaker, Disability Justice and Residential Segregation.

Equally important, I want to make sure we are all taking care of ourselves. Engage in whatever self-care practices make you feel the best. Express and allow yourself to feel the emotions you have! The Women’s Center, The Mosaic Center, the Queer Student Lounge and the Counseling Center are campus resources that are here to help with that process.

Until next week!

A blog reflection by Joe Levin-Manning, Graduate Coordinator for LGBTQ Programs