The Black Action Plan— a student-run group creating structural change on campus to increase equity for BIPOC students— is collaborating with the Department of Community Living (DCL) to make changes to the first-year roommate matching process, according to a post on the Black Action Plan’s Instagram page.
The Black Action Plan posted on their Instagram on Nov. 23 that they were looking for questions and suggestions for how to improve the first-year roommate matching process. According to the post, the alterations to the matching process would be in an attempt to help stop noise complaints and the targeting of BIPOC students in these complaints.
“BAP is working with DCL to create new questions for the first-year roommate matching process to limit roommate situations that put Black, Brown, and Asian students at risk of targeted noise complaints,” according to the post.
The form to submit questions and suggestions for the university’s first-year matching process is linked on the Black Action Plan’s Instagram page. On the form, it asks students if they have any question ideas for what should be added to the survey which would best allow for there to be a change in the targeting of BIPOC students in noise complaints.
The survey offers suggestions for what potential question changes could look like including, “how often do you clean your room? How sensitive are you to noise at night? What noise conditions do you need to sleep,” according to the survey.
No updates regarding the revision of first-year matching process have been made on DCL’s Becoming Anti-Racist page. The Becoming Anti-Racist page updates community members on how the working groups of the Community Living Staff are incorporating ideas from the Black Action Plan into the department in order to become anti-racist. According to the page, it is meant to be, “updated regularly to share information with [Brandeis’] community as [DCL] focus on being anti-racist.” The most recent update to the page was on September 30, according to the working groups’ community check-ins.
The Hoot reached out to the student leaders of the Black Action Plan, Sonali Anderson ’22 and Deborah Ault ’22, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
