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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

MSSC tailors staff roles for cultural communities

The Multicultural Student Services Center reorganized the roles of its staff members this fall by assigning a coordinator to each of the University’s cultural populations.
 
Each community leader manages the services, resources and programs for a specific population of students comprising the African-American, Latino, East Asian, South Asian, Native American and LGBT communities.
 
In past years, one person was responsible for the needs of these various cultural communities. 
 
“Since every community has slightly different needs, we can now target our support based on those needs,” Michael Tapscott, director of the Multicultural Student Services Center, said.
 
The coordinators will focus on the academic, professional, social and spiritual needs of each community, but Tapscott said the staff realizes that “you can’t put people in boxes,” and the coordinators will continue figuring how best to serve each group of students.
 
“There is no monolithic viewpoint on how a white American or an African-American or a Latino American is going to manage their college experience,” Tapscott said.
 
The staff members are expected to communicate with each other more often “and in a more purposeful way,” Tapscott said. This enables student groups to align their programming with the University’s broader diversity efforts.
 
Multicultural groups also report to an adviser in the Center for Student Engagement. Tim Miller, director of the newly restructured organization, said the two organizations will work more closely than ever under the new model.
 
Tapscott said one instance of the increased collaboration among MSSC student organizations was the month-long Latino Heritage Celebration. MSSC advisor Eric Gutierrez helped the Organization of Latino American Students – the event’s primary coordinator – collaborate with other multicultural groups like La Casa Blanca, La Unidad Latina and Latinas Promoviendo Comunidad.
 
 
Programming that includes students from many cultures strengthens their ability to interact with people of different backgrounds, Tapscott said. “When you’re grounded in your own cultural identity, you have a greater capacity to understand other identities,” he added.
 
Sophomore Jasmine Stovall, director of community service for the Black Student Union, said non-ethnic or cultural student organizations might not have felt comfortable reaching out to the MSSC in the past, but the University’s multicultural center is working to change that.
 
“They want us to be more inclusive,” she said, adding that her group has felt the pressure to partner up with more organizations.
 
“They’ve always encouraged us to co-sponsor, but they’re doing so now more than ever,” Stovall said, adding that with the LGBT resource center’s new location in the MSSC, “the community is getting even bigger.”

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