The NAACP group at Bryn Mawr took six students to spend three days in New York participating in a leadership diversity conference. The conference took place from Nov. 18th to the 19th and was full of students and faculty from colleges all over the country. There were people there from Florida, Texas, Illinois, California and so many other states. Bryn Mawr students were there to represent Pennsylvania 🙂

The weekend was packed with interactive workshops and meaningful discussions. Being a posse student, it was really interesting to participate in similar activities, but with a different atmosphere and group. Bryn Mawr posse students and our guests (who we call posse plussers) spend a weekend in the spring of every year diving deep into a conversation about diversity, very similar to this conference. But the experience in this conference was very different than my first posse plus retreat last spring.

On the second day of the conference, I participated in the identity politics workshop, where we did the same activity Posse had us do last year. The activity involved different areas of the room having posters with an identity (ex: race, gender, sexuality, religion, (dis)ability). The facilitators would then read out statements and participants would move to the area/identity that we most strongly connected to that statement. It was interesting for me to do this because I realized my answers changed from last spring. This made me think about how much I’ve changed in half a year and how much Bryn Mawr has impacted me to see things differently.

I really enjoyed this conference, as it made me questions and deepen many of my beliefs/values. Opportunities like this are why I appreciate having come to Bryn Mawr.

Yesterday morning, Bryn Mawr students were excited to vote on what was, for many of us, our first time voting. There was a shuttle that took us from campus to the nearest voting poll. The polls were full of long lines of college students. I casted my vote, ate warm chocolate chip cookies with hot chocolate and awaited the results.

Fast forward a couple hours and both TGH and the campus center are full of concerned students watching the election. As time went on and it became evident that Trump was doing remarkably well, you felt the energy drop. Bryn Mawr is a very liberal college and many of us were rooting for Clinton. Trump represents so much of what we are trying to fight against.

This is a very different experience from my sister’s time at Bryn Mawr when Obama was being elected. She spoke of TGH being filled with cheers everytime he won a state. I speak of the campus center being filled with tears and hugs everytime Trump won a state. But the hugs, the warmth, the solidarity in that room made this night less threatening.

Today my professor sent a heartfelt email about self care and assuring us that if we had to take the day off because this election was too personal, we could. I appreciate that Bryn Mawr is an institution that is helping me cope with these results rather than amplifying my pain.

Later today there will be vigils, protests and activism to express our sentiment at this difficult time. Bryn Mawr students don’t sit with their arms crossed in the face of hate. We fight back.