Third through twelfth graders sat together in Parker’s Heller Auditorium on Monday, December 9 to hear the stories and perspectives of Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of civil rights icon Ida B. Wells. This Morning Exercise was brought to the Parker community by WOCA, the new women of color affinity group.

“WOCA provides an intimate space for students, faculty, and staff of color to first of all meet each other and get to know who each one of us is,” Upper School Spanish teacher and member of WOCA Yadiner Sabir said. 

Parker’s Women of Color Affinity group was created at the beginning of the 2019 school year by juniors Leila Griffin, Olivia Hanley, Aziza Mabrey-Wakefield, and Asha Wright. There’s been a MOCHA (Men of Color and Heritage Affinity) at Parker for a long time.

“I started talking to Ms. Jurgensen about doing it last year because I had the same question: why isn’t there a WOCA?” Griffin said. “It’s not to be in competition with the boys but it seemed odd to me that there wasn’t one. This year we all came together to form it.”

In years past, faculty and staff at Parker have been interested in having an affinity group for women of color. However, because there weren’t any students taking initiative, plans fell through.

These four junior women were the first group of students to try and make it an official student-led organization with the help of Vice Principal Ruth Jurgensen, who they asked to be the faculty sponsor of WOCA. She coordinates logistics and helps the heads implement plans that the group comes up with as they continuously identify the support they need. The heads submitted their club charter three months into the school year and started meeting weekly during Thursday U-lunch soon after.

WOCA currently has around twenty-five to thirty-five members consisting of faculty, staff, and students. They fill an entire classroom with people sitting and standing. The inclusion of faculty and staff as members of the affinity group was very intentional. The heads believed it was important for the students to know who the adults are in the building and vice-versa, so any woman of color at Parker can reach out to another whenever they may need. The upper school students could then, in turn, offer support to younger students.

“I think we are very diverse as women of color and personally I like to see that many women of color together. I’m surprised as to how many of us are here, and you probably don’t notice that until we are all in one space,” said Sabir, who volunteered her classroom to be the meeting space.

Currently, the members are in the phase of getting to know one another and getting comfortable in the group setting. A standard WOCA meeting will include icebreaker games, group dynamic activities, check-ins about how the week is going, and discussions regarding experiences at Parker as a woman of color. 

“We try to incorporate a mix of educational things but then also just fun activities for the group to bond over, so we’ll have a discussion in the beginning and then we’ll probably just play a game and chat— it’s very informal,” Hanley said.

One of the members, sophomore Tristen Tate, said that she likes WOCA because “it’s always fun and it provides a great space for all female-identifying students of color to talk about and work through our shared experiences at Parker.”

“What has been lacking is a support system for that sisterhood of having another person who can understand your experiences,” Sabir said, “either because they’re similar to yours or because they can understand what it feels like to be different even if they don’t have the same experiences.”

In the future, the heads are hoping to organize field trips, conferences, panels, and various other activities.