Fighting racial inequality from high school to Penn

Engineering freshman Andre Wallace has been dedicated to fighting racism since he was in high school.

Growing up in Evanston, Illinois, Wallace found the inspiration for his advocacy in the dynamics of his school and community.

“Evanston’s a very diverse community on paper, but there’s so, so much that needs to be done in terms of just uniting our community,” he said. “In school, I thought it was interesting that there was so much divide between people just based on where they lived [and] what they looked like — I wanted to make their experience more of a united front.”

Wallace saw a need for students to realize their commonalities despite differences in background. This, he thought, was what could bring the student body together.

“I really was just working on trying to find ways to show people that there was a lot of common ground between each other,” he added.

Bringing people together is a major aspect of Wallace’s platform in fighting racism. He wants students to start reaching out to different types of people that they normally would not associate with.

“That is the first real step in changing racism,” he said.

In an effort to effect this change, Wallace joined two student groups in high school — Students Organized Against Racism and Team Access and Success in Advanced Placement.

“SOAR was more of a platform to get students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to discuss their daily lives and what issues were showing up for them and ways to advocate for themselves in the school,” Wallace said.

Team ASAP, on the other hand, focused on the enrollment and success of underrepresented students in Advanced Placement courses.

As a result of his advocacy, Wallace won the 2015 Princeton Prize in Race Relations, which helped him to validate the work he had done.

“There’s a point in time where you’re just like, ‘Am I making a difference? Is it worth it whatsoever?’” he said. “I was super, super excited to get the Princeton Prize.”

Since coming to Penn, Wallace’s activism has taken a back seat to academics and adjusting to the rigor of college life, but he does not intend for it to stay that way.

“I did a lot more in high school than I’ve done here; I’m trying to change that up for next year,” Wallace said. “My goal for next year is really to sit down and work with ... a group called Students Confronting Racism and White Privilege.”

Wallace’s goals for his activism do not stop there — he has big plans to bring advocacy into his future career as an engineer.

“Within the racial advocacy work, there’s so much qualitative literature, but in terms of looking at ways to quantify and measure racism, there’s no really great way of doing that,” he said. “The skills I’m learning through Engineering will really help me in the long run, help me figure out ways to address systematic racism on a quantitative level, and that’s really what I’m looking forward to trying to do after four years here.”

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