An assembly only goes so far toward inclusion efforts

By Mrinalini Keskar, ‘22

This year, Catlin Gabel School (CGS) Upper School students have attended a few virtual assemblies run by CGS’ Anti-Racist Collective (ARC). 

At 10:40 a.m. on a Wednesday, they open their laptops, and log onto a meeting. Some turn off their screens. A few minutes later, the assembly commences. The student leaders introduce themselves, the topic, and the panelists, who will later share their stories to the student body. 

About 40 minutes later, at 11:20, the students log off and close their laptops. Some type a quick ‘thank you’ into the virtual chat, before leaving. 

Every two weeks, ARC has a meeting. 

ARC was founded on the basis of fighting racism within CGS by initializing difficult conversations and dismantling systems within the school. 

Member of ARC and Upper School Inclusivity Coordinator Catie Macauley described the work that ARC does and how the group plans for assemblies. “The standard procedure is that someone in the organization will have some kind of a proposal for an assembly,” shared Macauley. ARC also has a “master list of all the kind of assemblies” that they believe would be important for the student body to hear about. 

“I meet with John and Jasmine, and we figure out what day and what time we can make that happen, and then come back to ARC, create a proposal, talk about the people we want to bring in [as panelists], and then we would take a vote as a whole organization,” said Macauley. “If the proposal passes, we move forward in reaching out to people who want to. Once we secure the panelists, we collaborate with them and correspond with them via email, or Zoom, and then we just hold the assembly.”

ARC spends countless hours planning and considering different topics for Upper School assemblies, where students can dive deeper into nuanced topics, such as the diversity in the experiences of sexism or the real history of Martin Luther King Jr. and his political beliefs.

However, after these hours of planning, does an assembly do the heavy lifting of having supposedly difficult conversations? And if so, why do they fail to engage some students and even faculty members? 

For now, assemblies do not serve the purpose of having difficult conversations. In fact, assemblies are far from a conversation. Especially in assemblies in a virtual format, the chat feature is largely not used by students to engage in conversation until the very end to say thank you to the panelists. When students are being talked at, it’s not surprising that the end result is not very interactive. 

CGS alum Aarushi Phalke, who graduated in 2020, thinks that the conversations had during assemblies are focused on the wrong subject. “Because [Catlin] is claiming to be anti-racist, that means we’re assuming we live in a white supremacy,” said Phalke. “Then there’s this obfuscation, or making something so obscure that it’s hard to recognize what the problem is and how we address the problem.”

During her time at CGS, Phalke was heavily involved in anti-racist work. “When I started engaging with inclusion work, it went in the form of ‘we are putting focus on those who are marginalized.’ So much is there, and it can be really empowering, but at the same time, we never interrogate whiteness,” she said. “The problem is white supremacy. The symptom of the problem is people at school who are marginalized being the victims of microaggressions.” 

Phalke explained this phenomena in the form of an analogy. “Let’s say I broke my arm,” she said. “I go to the hospital and they see my arm is broken. They ask me, ‘what’s the problem’ and I say ‘I’m in pain.’ They could give me pain meds, but that doesn’t solve the problem that my arm is broken.” 

In an ideal situation, the patient would have the actual problem of their broken arm mended and be given pain medication.

In the case of CGS’ anti-racist and inclusion work, hearing the stories of those affected by racism and sexism is necessary, but not necessarily the solution. 

ARC is wary that assemblies are not the answer to problems within the community. 

“People being passive with assemblies is understandable because in the past we’ve had this issue of having the same assembly every year,” said Macauley. “Like for MLK day, we usually have a presentation on MLK and some generic speech on how racism is bad. For people who want to go deeper into that conversation, there’s a reason why they’d be checked out.”

Macauley also recognized that some people are just less interested and engaged than others. 

“There’s also the issue of the people who just have the privilege to not tune in,” she mentioned. 

Tuning into assemblies and looking at assemblies as a solution to systemic issues is a form of performative activism. In reality, after listening to stories of panelists, the work is far from over. 

In addition to failing to accomplish creating a space for difficult conversations, using assemblies as a time to solely listen to panelists places a burden on students and panelists of color to be vulnerable in front of a majority white space, composed of hundreds of people. 

As Phalke mentioned, sharing stories can be empowering. Yet for the predominantly white audience, listening to these stories is not always powerful in creating action. 

“We’ll listen to people talking about how hard their lives are, and us feeling emotionally drained from that makes us feel like we are doing the work. It’s like ‘If I’m moved by this, then I’m a good person,” Phalke noted. 

To make for a more productive assembly that does not put students of color in vulnerable spaces all the time, the conversation should revolve around the problem, which is white supremacy. In these conversations, people of color should be empowered to speak, and want to speak up, instead of being asked to speak.