Amanda Reid | Constructing home

Reid about it! | Exploring exclusion and belonging at the ARCH cultural houses

By Amanda Reid 02/29/16 10:06pm

My first experience with the cultural houses was during a meet and greet hosted by the Pan-Asian American Community House. I came alone, stood in line to get food and after quickly surveying the room, began to feel it: I was surrounded by a room where everyone knew someone.

As a sophomore, I still feel anxious about going to the basement of ARCH. I’m afraid I won’t be welcomed, and I’m afraid I won’t relate to people there. It’s something that’s rarely mentioned or given any thought: Even within minority groups, people will still feel alienated from the cultural homes Penn offers for them.

I knew that I wasn’t the only one that felt this way, but I also wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going crazy with my feelings of anxiety. So I reached out to a few students who had thoughts they were willing to share, and found mixed experiences with the various cultural houses.

I talked to an Asian sophomore, who believes that the issue with PAACH is the difficulty of grouping such diverse experiences together: “It’s so fragmented how Asian Americans are portrayed at Penn. What is Asian American? It’s so broad. I don’t think PAACH can necessarily solidify that.”

He continues by describing cultural belonging conflicts with the issues within the cultural houses: “Going into PAACH feels like going into these small cultural groups. It’s hard to break into these bubbles, but maybe that’s because I’m not a freshman who comes for all the events.”

The strange tension exists in how a “home” solidifying individuals can also act as a force pushing them away. I talked to another Asian sophomore, who has also had difficulty with PAACH: “The community is so close–knit. They’ll be nice to me, but I won’t feel welcomed. I think this issue needs to be addressed. Maybe they’re trying to make the space more welcoming, but it’s not working.”

Lawrence Li, a Wharton senior, has been deeply involved in multiple cultural and community groups since his junior year. He is currently involved with APALI (Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative) and used to be involved in APSC (Asian Pacific Student Coalition).

“I came to PAACH midway through fall of my junior year,” he describes. “I got involved later than most people. It took effort at first. You have to get integrated in a community where everybody already knows each other. But for me, the effort I needed to put in was something I wanted to do.”

Nikki Thomas is a College freshman and a regular at Makuu. Nikki is aware that certain divisions exist as a de facto characteristic of ARCH: “We don’t really go into the other cultural houses; they don’t really come in here. It’s like you have your space, we have ours.”

When speaking about this kind of separation, Nikki comments: “I’m fine with things as they are. There are so few Black spaces on campus, it’s ridiculous.” Essentially, Makuu becomes a necessary space for black students: “This is a space for us to decompress, and to be human beings in world that sees us as something other than that.”

Billy Kacyem is a Wharton and College sophomore. Originally from Cameroon, Kaycem argues that at Penn, “the idea of Blackness came out even more.”

He agreed that though divisions among cultural houses may exist, Makuu is a welcoming space for black students: “It’s a space to feel free and liberated. Makuu offers us a space to become more close, because even with the idea of diversity, [the Black community] is very small here.”

After all this investigation, I’ve found that there’s a give and take on both sides. It is not only the individual that is being excluded, but they are actively excluding themselves.

I believe that the cultural houses in ARCH are spaces of comfort and safety. They are a space of love. They are homes. Sometimes divisions feel necessary — perhaps that’s the only way a home can be constructed. Yet how can a cultural space juggle the idea of “home” without creating the sense of exclusion?

To deny that tension exists among and within these cultural houses is naive. A home is built by people who have committed to each other, so perhaps this reflects the inherent lack of engagement from the community.

As someone who is afraid to break into new groups at ARCH, I find myself knowing less and less about others, and more focused on my own cultural sphere. The outsider effect is actually achieved through a mutual indifference.

We don’t want to admit that we don’t care about each other, but the reality is, we’re pretty removed from the people around us. If an exclusionary home is necessary for people to simply feel safe, that says more about the society formed at Penn than it does about the home. The houses under ARCH are there for us, and they can be open physical spaces. But if we aren’t willing to open ourselves too, it aggravates that bubble that excludes us even more.

AMANDA REID is a College sophomore from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, studying cinema studies & English. Her email address is amreid@sas.upenn.edu. “Reid About It!” usually appears every other Tuesday.

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