The inclusivity of affinity spaces

Recently, you may have heard that temporary “affinity rooms” have been erected in the Fields Center for certain racial minorities on campus. You may have also heard people from all walks of life from the University community — students, professors and alumni — voicing their disapproval of these new structures. The spaces have been denounced as “self-segregating” and “building[s] of barriers,” mocked as “safe spaces” gone awry and described as places to reinforce “otherness.” In short, the rooms’ establishment has been shockingly controversial, and backlash has continued to thrive even a month after their announcement.

Many of the people questioning the efficacy or utility of the affinity spaces, however well-intentioned their criticisms may be, have a fundamental misunderstanding of the role these spaces can and will play in Princeton’s culture. Criticism largely stems from a belief that the spaces will somehow re-segregate the University community by providing places into which people not of the room’s designated ethnic affinity will never be able to set foot. In other words, spaces that explicitly keep out people of certain races, even if those races are privy to a certain degree of societal privilege otherwise, are universally and unequivocally harmful.

Though the student groups to which these spaces have been granted are too new to have established their goals and policies, I find it hard to believe that any of them intend for these spaces to function as fundamentally racially-exclusive places. For evidence, look no further than two current affinity spaces on campus, the Women’s Center and the LGBT Center. They provide almost exactly the same function on campus as I imagine the racial affinity spaces will: to house a historically oppressed group of people in a room where they can feel more comfortable than they would elsewhere on the campus at large. In this, both spaces have been immensely successful; I have dozens of female and/or queer friends who have found a home in one or both of these spaces.

However, one of the important reasons both of these centers have operated with little to no controversy is that, much like the Fields Center’s affinity rooms, they have never been exclusive. I’ve gone to both places several times with no fear of any repercussions and have been invited to dozens more events by friends involved in each. Just because I am straight, cisgender and male doesn’t mean I’m automatically forbidden from the Women’s Center or the LGBT Center; though neither of those places was constructed explicitly for me or people of similar identities, I’m still welcome in both rooms as long as I respect the space for what it is.

The affinity spaces in the Fields Center will presumably operate in the same manner. Although I understand people are worried that the rooms will totally split and segregate campus in unprecedented ways, given our current spaces’ uncontroversial and well-established operations providing a haven to non-privileged groups, I don’t see how it’s possible that the Fields Center’s rooms will deviate in a dangerous manner from the already-established modus operandi I’ve experienced. Moreover, given the general inclusivity of many student cultural, racial and ethnic groups for whom a space has been created at the Fields Center, including the Asian American Students Association, the Black Student Union and many others, I imagine the new rooms will follow the same path.

Blustering on about how a purportedly unwelcoming “safe space” on campus is totalitarian or an ill omen is a foolhardy pastime until the space actually fulfills the dire predictions made of it. Many of the most outspoken critics of the affinity rooms have probably never been to said rooms, which is unfortunate because they would likely find their worst fears pacified immediately upon entering. Though time will tell if these affinity spaces will indeed be exclusive and censorious, the chances of that seem very slim given the history of those kinds of spaces on campus, and it’s worth holding our criticisms back until we know they’re valid.

Will Rivitz is a sophomore from Brookline, Mass. He can be reached at wrivitz@princeton.edu.