Making Space to Make Community

MAKING

S P A C E

TO MAKE COMMUNITY

Our new Multicultural Center

ON A FALL NIGHT IN THE HILLS BUILDING, a crowd of students and faculty gathered in the space that a year ago had been a ceramics studio, and for decades before that, Thacher’s cafeteria. On this night, however, the School was gathering for the first time in a new Multicultural Center.

“So much of what we have been doing as a school of late is to examine our existing structures and reshape them to better align them with our values,” said Head of School Blossom Pidduck. “This space’s previous use as a ceramics studio seems especially apropos. We shape our vessels to the purpose we intend and now this space can better support the work we’re doing to support our students in being the kind of community our values call us to be.”

“This is the space we have always needed but never knew we could

have,” said one of the heads of the Black Student Union (BSU), Lawrence Langan ’22. “A couple of years ago, I could not have imagined that I would see this in my time at Thacher. Now that it is here, it feels like a space for everybody. We had a great cross-section of the School turn out for the opening. We’ve come a long way.”

The Multicultural Center comprises three rooms of various sizes and shapes designed to meet a range of needs, most of them student-driven. There is a large room for meetings of clubs, affinity groups, ally groups, or to serve as a venue for visiting speakers. There is a space set aside for team work or solitary study, and a bright and inviting lounge space for those who wish, in the words of Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matt Balano, “to take a break and a breath.” There is also an office for Raúl Soto CdeP 2014, who assists Matt by serving as a liaison with student groups to help them develop their own goals and programing for the space.

“The Multicultural Center welcomes students and adults of all backgrounds,” said Matt. “It is a space for engaging in community dialogues and to gather for club meetings, presentations, guest lectures, and film screenings centered on culture, identity, and belonging. The lounge area provides an additional central space on campus for students to relax and connect in the midst of a busy day or during down time on weekends. Overall, the

MCC functions to bring our community together in honoring, respecting and connecting across culture.”

As students and teachers mingled and chatted, a large screen displayed a series of slides, one of which read: “We need to care less about whether our children are academically gifted and more about whether they sit with the lonely kid in the cafeteria.”

The new space, a fulfillment of one of Blossom’s commitments from the summer of 2020, is one of many coordinated initiatives underway at Thacher. Members of the senior administration team and the faculty diversity council have been following a course of study with Equity Meets Design, a consultancy that empowers organizations to identify and solve problems within their community and culture. A cohort of 18 self-selected students, including Lawrence Langan, is also completing the process.

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“Instead of bringing in outside experts to tell us what to do at Thacher,” said Lawrence, “the School has helped us develop the tools we need to improve the School ourselves. In my workshop, we looked at the way physical spaces and structures on campus informed and supported our cultural attitudes and community priorities. I’m a Lower School prefect, so we made diagrams of the dorm and talked about how it reflected values, whether it supported or inhibited the things we find important, which spaces invite participation and inclusion, which ones didn’t.”

Other progress toward Thacher’s commitments to increasing equity and belonging can be seen in other items displayed on the wall in the Multicultural Center, which include posters promoting various speakers and events the School has hosted in recent years. Kicking off this year’s lineup was Anacapa Scholar Amikaeyla Gaston, a cultural arts ambassador for the U.S. Department of State and a highly sought-after performer and public speaker. Highlights of her week at Thacher included meeting with students in the Multicultural Center, addressing a Community Dinner, conducting a workshop with faculty, co-facilitating an affinity group leadership retreat, and leading an Indigenous Peoples’ Day assembly at the Outdoor Chapel.

One of the center’s main purposes is to provide a physical space for Thacher’s burgeoning affinity and ally group activities. Recent years have brought a notable upswell in interest and activities of this kind. The School now offers 11 such groups where there were only five a decade ago. The new space will also be a resource for recently-formed affinity groups supporting parents and alums when they visit campus.

As permanent as the new space feels, it is only a temporary solution as the School mulls a more comprehensive and permanent way of housing a range of services for supporting the student body and explores options for the best use of the Hills Building. In the meantime, however, the Multicultural Center has quickly become a key space in the day for many students.

“BSU has grown rapidly in my time here,” said Lawrence, “from fewer than 20 when I was a ninth grader to more than 40 now. We have always had spaces we could use, but they required advanced scheduling and often meant using the homes of our faculty advisors. To have this space available to us at any time has made a huge difference.”

And if the community needs instructions for using the new space, the writing is literally on the wall. One of the framed posters shares the words

of President Barack Obama: “It falls on all of us, regardless of our race or station... to work together to create a ‘new normal’ in which the legacy of bigotry and unequal treatment no longer infects our institutions or our hearts.”

Below: Posters of past community events decorate the walls of the new Multicultural Center. Lower right: Recent Anacapa Scholar Amikaeyla Gaston with Matt Balano.

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