Portland State welcomed its most diverse incoming class this fall and is on its way to becoming a majority-minority institution. The shift in demographics has brought new urgency to efforts to advance racial justice on campus and become a place where Black, Indigenous and people of color communities can come to be seen, supported, thrive and excel.
As part of its three-year Time to Act Plan for Equity & Racial Justice, PSU hosted a series of affinity conversations this summer and fall with BIPOC communities in the Portland region to dream up what a thriving future would look like for them — and what role PSU can and should play as Portland's anchor institution.
"Thriving means to prosper, flourish, vigorously develop," said Ame Lambert, vice president for Global Diversity and Inclusion at PSU. "BIPOC communities deserve to thrive. As we look ahead to the future, we need equitable access to postsecondary education, healthcare, living wages, leadership positions, and ultimately power and agency. Communities must collectively chart a course to ensure their future is one where they are thriving, and they need partners, critical agents and stakeholders to come alongside to ensure this plan becomes a reality."
Lambert and PSU President Stephen Percy acknowledged that for too long, PSU has missed the mark or hasn't done enough to uplift BIPOC communities and center their voices and needs. The summits and convenings were an opportunity for PSU to renew its commitment about what it means to be an anchor institution for BIPOC communities. The gatherings brought together PSU faculty, staff and students alongside community members from cultural organizations, education, community-based organizations, business, philanthropy, and government.
"The future of Portland State, the future of the city, the future of BIPOC communities are intertwined," Percy said. "If we do it right — and we haven't always done that — we'll thrive together and that's why this type of engagement is so important."
Five affinity convenings were held between June and November this year: Latiné Futures Convening; Convening on the Future of Black Thriving & Joy; Convening for a Thriving Future for Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Asian, and Asian American Communities; Convening for a Prosperous Future for Middle East, North African and South Asian Community; and Native Leaders Roundtable. On Nov. 4, PSU will host a macro convening for all of those groups and other underrepresented communities — The Future and Thriving of BIPOC Communities — to advance the work that emerged from the individual gatherings and elevate collective needs.
"What would it take for us to repair and to find new paths to move forward together?" Lambert said. "That is the work before us. We are here to find a pathway to our next because the current reality is not serving us well. We know we cannot get to our next from here without doing things differently. … We need all of us to do this."
Register for The Future and Thriving of BIPOC Communities macro convening.
Read on to learn what themes emerged from the affinity gatherings:
Latiné Futures Convening
The Latiné Futures Convening aimed to make futures and foresight thinking accessible to the community by balancing a focus on the here and now with a long-term view of the future that elevates Latiné stories, voices and lived experiences.
Cynthia Gómez, PSU's director of community and civic impact, facilitated the Latiné Futures Convening.Why It's Important:
PSU is an emerging Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) with 18.7% of its students identifying as Latiné, a gender-neutral alternative to Latino or Latina. Within the next two to five years, PSU expects to become a federally recognized HSI, a designation given to institutions with a Hispanic full-time undergraduate student enrollment of at least 25 percent. More than a quarter of this year's new 3,700 undergraduate students identify as Latiné.
"We want to be of service to our community and we want those students to feel like PSU is their home and a place they can come and achieve their educational dreams," said Cynthia Gómez, PSU's director of community and civic impact and the convening's organizer.
Major Themes:
Participants envisioned a future 10 years from now, thinking about what would have to happen for it to become true, the policies and practices that would exist, and why it would be important to the Latiné community's wealth-building and wellbeing.
The convening identified three major themes in pathways to higher education, climate change and justice and the changing workforce. Participants identified the need for:
- Adequately funding mentoring programs and resources that help Latiné students navigate the education and career systems when they're often the first in their families to do so;
- Ensuring that campuses like PSU are welcoming and inclusive spaces for students and their families;
- Working with business and industry partners to ensure students are prepared for the workforce and have jobs once they graduate;
- Developing community-informed policies and resiliency plans amidst a changing climate with a focus on localized food systems, rain gardens, solar energy, and faster and more accessible public transportation; and
- Closing the digital divide by making access to the internet and technology training more available and affordable
Next Steps:
PSU will create a clearinghouse with data gathered from the convening and future community-based visioning sessions, and, working in close partnership with community leaders, will create an implementation plan that answers the question: "What do we need to do today or tomorrow to either prepare for that future or to shape it in a more desirable direction?"
Convening on the Future of Black Thriving & Joy
The Convening on the Future of Black Thriving & Joy brought together the black community for a day and a half of listening, shared learning and recognition of points of synergy and opportunity.
A graphic recording captures the group's shareouts about their dreams for the future of Black thriving and joy (Angelique McAlpine)Why It's Important:
Portland State and the city's black community have a shared history that goes back to Vanport, the World War II-era federal housing project. PSU's predecessor, the Vanport Extension Center, got its start there in 1946 — as did many Black families because it was one of the few places where they could live due to discriminatory housing policies. Displacement followed for both after the catastrophic flood of 1948. Black families were forced to settle in Albina, and it became a bustling center of Black-owned businesses, community centers, houses of worship, doctors' and lawyer offices' and restaurants — until gentrification again pushed them out.
"The reality is that I worry about the same problems that we worried about in 1946: education, health, criminal justice, home ownership, displacement, gentrification," said Michael Alexander, former president and CEO of the Urban League of Portland. "But we are no longer geographic, so we have to find ways in which the strength of that community that was our ecosystem has to somehow be recreated and strengthened because many of us have traded a community for an address. We are not in a place where the line of sight to our nobility, strength and resilience is there for us everyday as a part of our living and nurturing."
Black Oregonians make up 3.2% of the state population — up from 2.2% a decade ago — but are overrepresented in the number of people who start college but don't finish and overrepresented in jobs that will be disrupted by automation. At PSU, 4.4% of the student body identifies as Black with 82% from Oregon and 71% from the tri-county area.
Major Themes:
The convening identified three major themes in education, workforce and economic and social mobility. Participants identified the need for:
- Helping families help themselves by providing pathways for them to finish their degrees (high school or college) and gain the skills necessary for better paying jobs
- Providing more financial assistance to Black students
- Reducing admissions red tape to make it easier for international students and refugees to continue their education at PSU
- Connecting students with internships at community-based organizations
- Working in partnership with employers to facilitate 100% job placement for Black students
- Expanding mentoring to students from elementary to college-level — and beyond; and
- Holding institutions accountable for the harms done to the community and moving from restorative justice to restorative economics, restorative education and restorative healthcare
Next Steps:
PSU will pilot a series of initiatives, including providing technical assistance for emerging BIPOC nonprofit organizations, building an intergenerational men of color mentoring pipeline, expanding tuition remissions and student success support programs and re-enrolling and supporting students who stopped attending PSU. One idea that emerged from the two-day event was a partnership between PSU and Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC) to hire current students of color to work part-time for POIC and receive tuition awards, mentorship and support. The program launched in October with a job fair.
Community Convening for Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, Asians, and Asian Americans
The Convening for a Thriving Future for Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Asian, and Asian American Communities brought together community leaders and members to cultivate and strengthen a renewed relationship with PSU and to determine how PSU may support the future and thriving of the incredibly diverse Pacific Islander and Asian American communities.
Participants pose for a group photoWhy It's Important:
PSU is working to become an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution, a federal designation for colleges and universities that have an enrollment of undergraduate students that is at least 10% AANAPI. Today, 10.5% of PSU's student body identifies as Asian American Pacific Islander.
"We all know the hypervisibility and invisibility our communities face," said Lindsay Romasanta, assistant vice president of Global Diversity & Inclusion. "It doesn't matter if there's 1%, 10% or 12%, the lives of our Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian and Asian American folks are central to us. They're central to our families. And we want to ensure that Portland remembers and Oregon remembers that we need this kind of continued work to support our people."
Romasanta shared data that highlights the importance of data disaggregation and the need for detailed data on various groups. Asian communities are often grouped together as the "model minority" but that's a disservice to the wide variety of income, education and health backgrounds between subgroups.
"Nationally, about one in five AAPI folks live on less than 200% of the federal poverty level," she said. "Within our communities, we have the highest level of unskilled workers while at the same time also having the highest level of technical high-skill workers. That points to the uniqueness, the variances that are within our community."
Major Themes:
The convening identified major themes in education and leadership development, economic justice, racial justice and healthcare. Participants identified the need for:
- Investigating umbrella terms such as Asian American and Pacific Islander while also embracing the power of coalitions and networks
- Strengthening the pipeline for students to get involved in community-based organizations and civic leadership
- Increased data disaggregation — not just on population but on financial investment in the communities — as well as coursework and classes around data justice and equity to better capture the knowledge and lived experiences that are community-centered and community-driven
- Continuing to bring communities together around a shared agenda, objectives and goals
- Providing more scholarships and grants for students to attend PSU
- Addressing the rise in bias and hate crimes against AAPI communities; and
- Providing linguistically and culturally appropriate community health programs to address racial health disparities
Next Steps:
As efforts to establish a Pacific Islander and Asian American Studies program at PSU move forward, community members reiterated the need to create a program that's by and for the community.
"Because we're in the beginning stages of that, you get the opportunity to do it right from the start," said Alyshia Alohalani Macaysa-Feracota, founding executive director of the Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition. "That means figuring out how we get community experts into those spaces as lecturers, as teachers to honor cultural wisdom, not just folks who have master's degrees or PhD's."
Native Leader Roundtable
The Native Leaders Roundtable brought together leaders from the Native community to start a conversation that will inform PSU's first Native summit in spring 2023. Participants shared insights into their current priorities and how they hope PSU will show up and partner.
A graphic recording captures the group's shareouts about their dreams for a thriving future (Tim Corey)Why It's Important:
The Institute for Tribal Government (ITG) at PSU is leading a process that will provide recommendations to support the establishment of a tribal relations program and provides capacity-building opportunities such as PSU's Certificate for Tribal Relations to assist leaders from PSU and elsewhere in engaging meaningfully and respectfully with tribes and understanding an Indigenous worldview.
"We want to get it right and we want to invite community in and get your vision, insights, expertise, knowledge, perspectives and experiences — all of those things to inform what this is together because it's our collective futures," said Serina Fast Horse, a PSU alum and ITG's program coordinator. "PSU is our city's college and it has a lot of influence and power, so figuring out what is done with that influence is going to be impactful for the future."
Major Themes:
The virtual roundtable identified major themes in education, workforce and economic development. Participants mentioned the need for:
- Building an Indigenous "brain trust," a pipeline aimed at recruiting Indigenous students to attend PSU, providing them with the wraparound services they need to thrive and graduate and preparing them for careers with Native organizations and tribes through internships and jobs
- Creating an Indigenous public policy think tank
- Finding opportunities for students and communities to connect virtually
- Having more nuanced conversations around tribal membership and affiliation
- Making PSU the center for Indigenous STEM education in the country; and
- Providing more financial and programmatic support to the Native American Student and Community Center, and as it celebrates its 20th anniversary, capturing and sharing the full story about its intent and design, working to repair the generational harm that has been caused, and reaffirming a community vision and purpose for the space
Next Steps:
The Native summit will take place in the spring, as part of PSU's ongoing efforts to become an Indigenous-affirming institution whose authentic relationships and partnerships with the nations and tribes in the region can help support Native student success and advance community priorities.
"This is a beautiful start to what is long overdue in investments in Native students, staff and faculty, and what PSU can do," Fast Horse said.