Photo by Sarah Wayou '28
By Angelina Godinez ’28
Staff Writer
Locating and attempting to recreate a “home away from home” is not a small feat for a person of color at a predominantly white institution such as Mount Holyoke College. This reality is one that many students of color must learn to overcome day by day, as the effort of bringing little pieces of home on their transcontinental and cross-country journeys to Mount Holyoke is essential to one’s identity and sense of belonging. Despite Mount Holyoke’s pride in its diverse campus, a majority of inclusion and community fostering efforts are student-led. This allows the College to effortlessly benefit off of the hard work and determination of students’ ongoing fight for inclusivity instead of reallocating funds and resources to create safe places on campus that are rich with culture and familiarity.
Each and every individual culture and ethnicity has different definitions on what is normal to them. From the way you dress, the food you eat, how you eat and share meals with others, how you celebrate specific holidays, how you talk to and interpret others, and how you engage with music, art and language: everything is built off one’s culture and ethnicity. While most of these traits are subconsciously implemented into one’s daily life, it can be difficult to replicate a sense of belonging on your own in a state completely unfamiliar to you. There really is no place like home.
It can feel especially difficult for students of color to not feel robbed of their culture when you have to DoorDash ingredients to cook your own culturally-specific, safe food after being met with the disappointment of Mount Holyoke’s “Global” station in the Dining Commons, especially when your residence hall’s Golden Pear kitchen doesn’t even have a mere pan to cook with. You are then met with the difficult obstacles of spending more money for cooking utensils, being able to only cook once a week with your busy schedule, or making the walk to Fimbel Maker and Innovation Lab and hoping to reserve the kitchen before your ingredients go bad.
In addition to the difficulty a full-time student faces when making cultural foods in inaccessible spaces, finding people who understand your language, music and cultural upbringing is not an easy feat. Although you can find similarities amongst your peers with the help of hard-working student organizations and cultural centers, it can be difficult to bond over these similarities when you are greeted with the harsh reality of forever being a minoritized “statistic” amongst privileged individuals whose homes are just a car ride away. It is a slap in the face to watch students with their families on Family and Friends Weekend and not have the luxury to travel back home for Fall break, November break, Spring break or even weekends. It will never get easier trying to create a home away from home when home seems so far and resources are so limited, but thanks to the resilience of student organizations, this challenge can be made just a little bit easier.
Among the multitude of fantastic, hard-working student-run organizations on campus who are working to create community, belonging and a safe place, one that has recently caught my eye is the Mount Holyoke African and Caribbean Students Association. Recently, MHACASA shared a post on Instagram further expressing the importance of community and belonging that reads, “There is no better feeling than being able to wind down and relax with your community, your culture. People who understand your language, your cultural dishes, your jokes.” Although it might appear to be a mundane thing to share a meal with others, to eat and laugh with people who are from similar upbringings as you can create lifelong bonds. Through MHACASA, we see how resilient and determined students fight to transform Mount Holyoke from a space to a place.
Through students’ ongoing dedication to incorporating culture and identity into daily campus life, the College will hopefully become a culturally diverse campus that is proud of and welcomes the backgrounds of all their students daily, as opposed to the current capitalization on international and multicultural students and impersonal marketing towards them. Our identity bleeds much deeper than a statistic that fulfills quotas used to claim diversity and wokeness. By continuing to share our cultures and working to integrate those cultures on campus, we fight to be seen as more than stereotypes and the color of our skin.
As MHC’s Office of Community and Belonging says on the College’s official website, “Creating our community is an ongoing process that we undertake together in order to build a place where every person feels welcome, respected and valued.” It’s time for the Mount Holyoke administration to start practicing what they preach and to take the burden off of students to create their own places of belonging.
Abigail McKeon ’26 contributed fact-checking.