Activism

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Activism 009

How To Start a Revolution at Your School

Speakers: DR. ERICA COCHRAN HAMEEN EVER CLINTON TAYLOR LATIMER ALYSSA MOYORGA

Excerpts from a presentation by the CMU NOMAS chapter at the 2020 National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) conference presenting the lessons learned and achievements of their activism over the past school year. Dr. Erica Cochran Hameen elaborates further on the process in an article for Architect magazine, “A Half Dozen Students Can Lead a Revolution,” published June 11, 2021.

"One thing that we really like to emphasize is that we are family here. Coming from Milwaukee, Wisconsin all the way to Pittsburgh, it was really important for me to find family. With our NOMAS chapter, that was something we really cultivated within each of our students.

Just organically, NOMAS likes to check in with one another to see how we are doing. We wanted to see where everyone’s mental capacity was at that moment in May 2020. It was a privilege to understand that some of our members actually went to local protests.

When we got back to campus, we asked that students communicate and document their experiences. That process is really huge because some of the injustices that we face within classes have been very informal-it may be just a slip of tongue. There are so many micro and macro aggressions that we [underrepresented minority students at the SoA] face that it is really important for us [NOMAS members] to communicate what is going on and then also document the process and the progress that we are making.

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After the summer 2020, members of the faculty, staff and administration were wondering how they could get involved. The most important way is just by having a genuine interest in the school’s underrepresented minority students. When you have a genuine interest in what we’re talking about, the kinds of things that we are going through, and how we can move forward, not only do you learn how you can be involved and supportive, but you show the students that you’re advocating for them and that you really care about them. It is life-changing to speak with the faculty, staff and administration on a very personal level."

—Ever Clinton M.Arch 2021 CMU NOMAS Grad Student Liason

"When I came into my NOMAS presidency, the first thing I thought about was how I wanted to use my platform during the rest of my time as a student. I decided that my goal was to not only increase the NOMAS membership, but to actually improve the student experience for underrepresented minority students. That mission statement drives everything that we do. When the work gets really hard, I remind myself: 'This is what I am fighting for.'

We began conducting surveys, which told us that the majority of students didn’t feel the same pressure that the underrepresentedminority students felt to drop out of architecture. This is just not acceptable. But what was also interesting was that a majority of SoA students considered the SoA diverse, but the minority students didn’t, so there was a discrepancy somewhere that we had to address."

—Taylor Latimer B.Arch 2021 CMU NOMAS President

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA "What students were asking for this year was a change in the school’s curriculum. A lot of times we only learn about white architects, and we only learn about them from white professors. We wanted to see a diverse set of case studies. We wanted to hear from different people. We wanted to really expand the voices that are speaking on architecture—that was one of the major changes we wanted to see in our pedagogy. And of course, one of our long term goals for the school is to have diverse full-time and tenured hires so that we’re expanding the people that we are learning from.

In terms of economic justice, how are we compensating students for the work that we are doing? This was a lot of labor that we put in over the summer of 2020, and we wanted to put a structure in place so that students are being supported financially for the work that they are doing to make the school a more inclusive place."

—Alyssa Moyorga B.Arch 2021; MSAECM 2021

"This is something that has been worked on for decades — trying to change the image [of the school’s demographics]. This endeavor is not something that we just woke up and decided to do and then-tadah!-flowers fell from the sky. It was a long and challenging path. As a result of UDream [an academic and job placement program for promising recent graduates of architecture, urban design and urban planning programs], the architecture profession in Pittsburgh saw a more than 400% increase in Black and Hispanic representation. It definitely involved a lot of struggling and a lot of really uncomfortable conversations.

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One of our goals as administrators is to create programs that create opportunities. At the same time, we also have to step back so that our young people can take leadership. We see this with the Movement for Black Lives and other movements happening now — young people truly have great ideas. We should provide opportunities for the students to lead and we must provide the needed support to help them succeed. I recommend that in every school, you have to find at least one or two faculty to shout for the students and be strong advocates, because if the students are shouting by themselves, they get ignored. They have to have at least one or two faculty who will be on their side and who are going to keep shouting from the rooftops."

—Dr. Erica Cochran Hameen NOMA, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, Assistant Professor, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Co-Director of the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics