Resource Center

167 High Street
Middletown, CT 06459
therc@wesleyan.edu
860-685-3979

Hours:

Sun from 12:30pm-9:30pm

Mon-Thurs from 10:30am-9:30pm

Fri from 10:30am-6:30pm

Mission and Areas of Focus

The Resource Center (RC) seeks to support, empower, and engage students with underrepresented and marginalized identities at Wesleyan University.  Through collaborating with students to promote social justice programming and activism, intersectional* education and awareness initiatives, and community advocacy, the RC strives to provide a safe** and inclusive environment for underrepresented students, faculty, staff, alumni, Middletown community members, and their allies to connect, learn, organize, and lead. 

The student and professional staff of the center will serve as a resource and connection hub for students to maintain awareness of matters related to intolerance and inaccessibility and to lessen violence in matters related to social identities and human differences on campus.  The staff also works to create partnerships with student leaders to support better resource sharing, coalition building, program promotion, and community development in order to collaboratively address the impact of injustice and inequity on the experience of underrepresented and marginalized students at Wesleyan.

*Critical race theorist and legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw originally coined “the concept of intersectionality to denote the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women’s employment experiences” (Crenshaw 1991, pg. 1244).  By using the term intersectional we want to recognize that different forms of oppression interact, overlap, and reinforce each other at both the systemic/institutional level and at the individual/interpersonal level.  The center’s areas of focus include promoting dialogue about the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, disability, gender, sexuality, sustainability, spirituality, and social and political activism. (Kimberle Williams Crenshaw. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6), pgs.1241-99)

**By safe we assert that the center is a space where we ask everyone to actively challenge dominating, controlling, dehumanizing, and oppressive behavioral patterns in ourselves, each other, and in our various communities.

All of the work of the professional and student staff of the center is directed by our primary areas of focus for collaboration and programming which include:

  • Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality; potential focus areas may include working with and supporting initiatives, students, and organizations who/which advocate for:
    • Students who do not come from White Western European cultural/ethnic heritages
    • Students who come from multiracial and multiethnic heritages
    • Students who come from native or indigenous cultural/ethnic heritages
    • Students who do not have United States citizenship
    • An intersectional approach to cultural and communal health and wellness, racial and ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, internationalism, and awareness of race/racism and the impact of colonization
    • Accommodations and accessibility for people who are not from a White Western European heritage, representation and visibility for people who are not from a White Western European heritage, voting rights for ethnic minorities, indigenous rights, addressing xenophobia/racism/colorism/nativism/white supremacy/colonization/racial profiling
  • Socioeconomic Status and Disability; potential focus areas may include working with and supporting initiatives, students, and organizations who/which advocate for:
    • Students who come from low-income backgrounds
    • Students who are first generation college students
    • Students who have mental and/or physical disabilities
    • An intersectional approach to mental and physical health/wellness, body/perceptual/cognitive diversity, and awareness of ableism and the stigma associated with non-normative bodies
    • An intersectional approach to financial health and wellness, socioeconomic diversity, and awareness of income inequality and classist stigma
    • Accommodations and accessibility for people who are not abled bodied and/or do not possess sufficient social/cultural/economic capital, housing access, representation and visibility for people who are not abled bodied and/or do not possess sufficient social/cultural/economic capital, fair labor laws, educational access, healthcare access, addressing classism/ableism/elitism/privatization/global development and displacement/homelessness/gentrification/employment discrimination/income disparities/achievement gap/exploitation/charitable-industrial complex/food deserts
  • Gender and Sexuality; potential focus areas may include working with and supporting initiatives, students, and organizations who/which advocate for:
    • Students who identify as queer, questioning, lesbian, transgender, gay, asexual, intersex, aromantic, abstinent, bisexual, multisexual, multiromatic, pansexual, polyamorous, gender variant, genderqueer, and/or non-binary
    • Students who identify as wom(e/x/y)n, feminists, womanists, sex positive, and/or body positive
    • An intersectional approach to sexual and reproductive health/wellness, gender/sexuality/attraction/body diversity, and awareness of the stigma associated with deviating from a strict heteropatriarchal gender binary
    • Sexual assault and violence prevention, accommodations and accessibility for people who are not cisgender heterosexual men, representation and visibility for people who are not cisgender heterosexual men, reproductive rights, gender policing, women's rights, lgbtq rights, addressing sexism/heterosexism/transphobia/monosexism/fatphobia
  • Spirituality and Sustainability; potential focus areas may include working with and supporting initiatives, students, and organizations who/which advocate for:
    • Students who engage in spiritual, contemplative, and/or religious practices
    • Intergroup dialogue, intercultural engagement, and practices of reconciliation
    • An intersectional approach to environmental and food justice
    • An intersectional approach to spiritual and environmental health/wellness, religious/cultural/economic diversity, and awareness of the stigma associated with believing in something other than the unconscious reproduction of neoliberal capitalism and liberal monohumanism
    • Environmental justice, food justice, indigenous rights, restorative justice, animal rights, liberation theology, addressing Islamophobia/anti-semitism/social isolation/consumerism/corporatization/industrialization/famine/desertification/environmental disasters and discrimination
  • Social and Political Activism; potential focus areas may include working with and supporting initiatives, students, and organizations who/which advocate for:
    • Students who engage in social justice, community organizing, and political and civic engagement
    • Intergroup dialogue and intercultural engagement
    • Policing and prison reform, immigrant rights, voting rights, employment discrimination, labor rights, educational rights and school reform, health care reform, addressing the military-industrial-complex/corporatization/industrialization/gerrymandering/political illiteracy and apathy