Articles

Women of Color Banquet

By Madeleine Cerone

April 6, 2023

As February blended into March, there was a celebration dinner of feminist of color and their success inside the Events Barn. The Black and Latinx Student Union, the Center for Intersectional Feminism and the Asian Student Union came together to organize the annual Women of Color Banquet, which took place on February 27th, 2023 during Womanist Week.

The Women of Color Banquet is a time for students, especially students of color, to celebrate their own successes, and the successes of women of color faculty and staff at Hamilton. The faculty and staff who are invited to this event as panelists prepare a presentation sharing the story of their career and collegiate journey: from the most incredible achievements to the most difficult academic and social challenges. These faculty success stories create a conversation about the struggles that their combined gender and racial identities bring to their chosen career paths. They also serve as confidence boosts for the student attendees who might be feeling stuck, since these esteemed faculty and staff have experienced similar obstacles. It can be challenging for students of color to find role models on Hamilton’s campus that share their same gender identity and ethnic background, so when the Women of Color Banquet puts these models in the spotlight, it is surely exciting!

This year, ASU, BLSU, and CIF handpicked four panel members to share their experiences with the attendees. They included Women’s Basketball Coach Mo Green, Government Professor Andrea Peña-Vasquez, and Anthropology Professor Chenyu Wang in person and Women and Gender Studies Professor Margo Okazawa-Rey on zoom. 

The goal of the Women of Color Banquet is to provide a special time for women of color students and faculty to congratulate each other, and celebrate that this world is changing. With each annual banquet the number of women of color at Hamilton slowly but surely increases. The banquet creates community among our faculty, staff, and student women of color and it gives this community a chance to celebrate all they’ve accomplished through all the adversity they have faced.