The video above documents the Smith College Refugee Consortium, which met in the spring of 2017 to discuss Smith’s efforts to organize and implement effective initiatives in service to Northampton’s immigrant and refugee community.  As the video conveys, a number of groups—faculty, staff, and students—engaged in the project of welcoming refugees to the Northampton area.  A student group, HERS (Higher Education for Refugees at Smith) founded the previous year, was actively involved.  The following interview with the two student leaders, Rachel Cooke ’20 and Vivian Nguyen ’20, highlights the  interest Smith students have shown in supporting refugees in our community as well as the continuity between past and present engagements.

• What has been the result of your efforts to create scholarships thus far?

We are very pleased with the Marianne Ejier Olds ’47 Scholarship, which was announced last semester (https://www.smith.edu/news/scholarship-for-refugee-undocumented-students/). We have been working with outside organizations such as Books not Bombs to further decide our next steps in making a Smith education accessible for refugee students.

• Has the scope of your work evolved since the inception of your group?

Our mission has always been twofold: to educate the community on the refugee experience and to directly support the Northampton refugee resettlement. The latter we try to adapt to what the current refugees need most urgently. For instance, last winter we spearheaded a successful winter clothing drive and ultimately collected over 700 articles of clothing. This year, with the influx of child refugees, we plan on organizing a school supply drive for them, in addition to other events and services that help meet the needs of Northampton’s refugees.

• How has the Smith community as a whole embraced your efforts?

The Smith community has been very supportive of our efforts. The administration, especially, has been so receptive to our concerns in ensuring Smith education is possible and affordable for refugees. As of right now on campus, we are the sole organization attending to the needs of refugees but we always welcome other organizations who are interested in collaborating to reach out. Any race, gender, sexuality, and identity can be a refugee, which is why inclusivity in organizing is so important to us.

• Do you feel that increasing the presence of refugees at Smith, in addition to helping the individual refugee student, has the potential to foster important intellectual contributions that might otherwise be lost?  

Yes, increasing refugee education fosters important intellectual contributions that might otherwise be lost- most significantly, their narratives. Ensuring that the experiences and history of refugees is not lost is exactly why our organization exists. Refugee stories, like Viet Thanh Nguyen’s (who won the Pulitzer for The Sympathizer last year and just this past month was named a MacArthur Genius) are important- not in just changing public perception and helping to not repeat history but as a testament to their strength and courage. Further, giving refugees the necessary tools to help uplift themselves will drive them to help the next refugee generation. I say this from my own experience as the daughter of two refugees, who, from their own education, have been able to devote their lives to sharing their story as being child refugees during the Vietnam war and help make America home for today’s refugees.

• My recent research in the archives for Global Impressions has uncovered a student movement of the 1930s to raise scholarship money for refugee students endangered by pre-World War II instability in Europe. In 1938, for example, an event created by several student groups encouraged each Smith house to run a fundraising campaign, a movement which collectively raised nearly $2000. Do you recognize any immediate similarities between these events and the work of your organization today?

Smith is a really expensive institution, but luckily, it is need-based. We realize that there are many hidden costs to attending, such as travel, dorm supplies, books, and clothing. That is the gap that we are hoping to close in future efforts through item donations.

 

Interview Conducted by Amanda Carberry ’21

Temar France ’18 is a digital media scholar and Student Fellow of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute for the 2017-2018 project War. Temar is an Africana Studies major driven by a curiosity in Womanist theology and African American spiritual practices. She co-hosts the podcast Marginalia, where she explores topics of gender and the legibility of global blackness. After graduation, Temar plans to travel abroad and pursue her graduate studies.

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