RIT StoryBooth with Dr. Taj Smith for Together RIT (2022), 2022-11-04

LANDYN HATCH: All right. Today we're interviewing Dr. Taj Smith, Director of Diversity Education as part of the RIT Archives StoryBooth initiative. Taj recently chaired a new RIT event, Together RIT: A Day of Understanding, Solidarity and Racial Reconciliation on Friday, October 21, 2022. Today is Friday, November 4, 2022 and the time is 10:42 AM. My name is Landyn Hatch, and I am the Marie Golisano Graham Outreach Archivist in the RIT Archives. So before we start questions, Taj, may I just ask for your verbal consent to record this interview?

TAJ SMITH: Yes, I consent.

LANDYN HATCH: Great, thank you. And so Taj, can you tell us how the idea for Together RIT was generated?

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, well, a lot of the motivation came through the Race and Ethnicity Action Plan, um, that was sort of set in place, um, probably about two years now. Um, and I was among many who are charged to participate in the subcommittee work from that plan and so the subcommittee that I lead had to do with community leadership, um, kind of content area. And um, I uh, had a sense of this kind of event being done on other campuses, previous campus that I worked on, as well as some other places. So it was sort of a personal idea that was then shared with the committee. The committee had input on it, um, and decided they were, they liked the idea and um, we kind of brought in some other models. So that was sort of the, the origin of how that idea came about, um, you know, which originally was started off just as a Day of Understanding, Solidarity and Racial Reconciliation, and then eventually, we added it Together RIT.

LANDYN HATCH: And so you started at RIT in about 2019?

TAJ SMITH: Yes.

LANDYN HATCH: Correct. So is this the one of the first big events that you've put on on campus?

TAJ SMITH: Ah, yeah, I guess it would be the campus wide thing. Yes, yes.

LANDYN HATCH: And so let's talk about the planning process a little. So you mentioned there was a planning committee. How did you determine, you know, who we wanted to be representative of the campus on that?

TAJ SMITH: Right, right. Um, so some of those people came from the Race and Ethnicit— Ethnicity Action Plan Subcommittee. But then we recognized we needed to have other, you know, perspectives involved. So we definitely want to make sure we had student representation, staff and faculty representation. Um, so it really was, uh, partly relying on other people to kind of make recommendations. Um, also putting it out to the campus via our, it’s like a volunteer option tab on the website, so people kind of signed up also that way, um, but a lot of the folks had been involved in the process at some point with the plan and so we compiled that group together. And then out of that planning committee, that official Together RIT Planning Committee, um, you know, we met over the course of about a year. So really, all of last year. Some people continued from fall to spring and then smaller groups did some work over the summer, that was mostly your call for proposal folks, those who review the actual proposals and those who are still working on marketing.

LANDYN HATCH: And so how did the planning committee determine the three main conference themes: Understanding, Solidarity and Racial Reconciliation?

TAJ SMITH: Right, right. Yeah, that was big for me. I was probably the driver, certainly of that, because I wanted to make sure that we, as a committee, understood what this day was about, right, that this day, was going to talk about race and ethnicity, but needed to do so in a complicated fashion of that. One, needing to include all racial, well as many racial and ethnic groups as we can, or that, those that are relevant to our environment. Um, and so some of that led to teasing out the understanding and solidarity and reconciliation. And so we kind of uh, kind of the brainstorming or mind mapping, if you will activity, and we took each of those words and sort of said, well, what does it mean to understand something? And so we, you know, I was the scribe, so I remember, we were doing that on a whiteboard and so we have long lists for all three of those sort of general terms, and it allowed for some alignment, but also disagreement, right, and we needed to go through that because I expressed to the group is that the people who were hoping to have attend this will look at each of these concepts or words differently, and we need to be able to accommodate that, um, or be aware of that. And then later that would then go in forming the proposals, right, which we knew and we wanted to make sure that it was expansive enough that people could submit what they were interested in and so they also just needed to have those things defined. So that helped them better write a more accurate proposal.

LANDYN HATCH: And what was the, um, sort of receipt? What was the proposal process like were, you know, faculty… was there any, like, pulling on your end? Was it you know, was there a good campus response immediately? Or how did you guys work that out?

TAJ SMITH: Right. Yeah, I think because it was a, it's a new event and program, so there was a lot of educating, uh, parts of the population on what the day was, in general. By the time we got to the proposal release, kind of promoting it, you know, we were running up against the end of the semester, so it was like, April, was really the time that most it would have gotten on some people's radars. The challenge is that, you know, looking back, and what we would change for the next year is that we need to do that a little bit earlier, particularly for the student population, you know, during April was a very busy month for them. Finals, transitioning to real life, you know, quote, unquote, “real life” after being a student. You know, so there's a lot going on. So um… Sorry, I lost my train of thought now. Can you repeat your question again, sorry.

LANDYN HATCH: So, um, we're talking about the proposal process. So, it was about April that it generally got on people's radar? That's kind of— I'll ask a follow up question. That's kind of a difficult time because I think people leave campus and so how did you continue to generate momentum over the summer and into October?

TAJ SMITH: Right? Yeah. So we knew we needed to review the proposals over the summer, so that we can use the accepted proposals to help promote, to attend and so that, that promotion needed to take place in August and September, for real kind of buy-in. So, we got, um, I would say, probably, or the proposal due date was set for I think, June 30. We probably had about close to 20 or so around that time, which I was happy with. A lot of that happened in the last few weeks of June. (laughs) Right? So early on, there was like, maybe a handful and so I was like, Okay, you know, what’re we gonna do here. Um, but we knew that some people will submit late, there were some folks we know, particularly students, some student leaders, we did kind of send follow up emails to and say, hey, we'll work with you, if you submit, right, if even if you need an extension past this June 30, deadline. So we were flexible, particularly with the student body, because we knew that, that April would be a difficult time. I did give some, uh, extensions to some faculty and staff as well, but those are a smaller group of people. Um, because again, the committee wanted to review and we did much of that review in July, but then we also wanted to, we needed to follow up with some folks because their proposal, uh, was missing some things and so we wanted to follow up and say, “Hey, we need some additional information”. So we needed that, you know, last two weeks or so of July to get their feedback to then really accept them by the middle of August.

LANDYN HATCH: So you mentioned targeting some specific student leaders, who were they or what organizations were they attached to?

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, we largely took the frame of demographics and so making sure we wanted to have, uh, some gender diversity, really amongst all of our folks who submitted a proposal. Um, we wanted to have um, hearing status, kind of diversity, make sure we had folks who were deaf, hard of hearing, hearing participate. So that kind of led to some targeting. And then we saw, um, from the student side around race and ethnicity, that we weren't getting a lot of students of color submissions early on, um we were getting white students submissions, which was great, we wanted that, but not as much as students of color. So we targeted some of those. So LASA is a big Latino organization. I think looking back on it, we could have probably targeted some other groups as well, um, but the demographic, the desire to have a diverse representation in not only topic, but also presenters that really guide at some of that additional outreach.

LANDYN HATCH: And did you apply similar strategies to faculty and staff? Were there any colleges or departments that you targeted?

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, there was probably some because I knew that they were doing some work already in this area, so I might have given them a little extra nudge (laughs), or encouragement. Certainly, we didn’t do that for all the colleges, for sure, um, and that was probably just, probably half oversight, half a limited amount of time and follow up, but also knowing that a lot of faculty don't engage over the summer. So very much like students, when summertime comes they're trying to remove on vacation, or they're writing and researching. So, um, we know that would be a stretch outside of personal connections we had.

LANDYN HATCH: And so we're into August now, with the proposals, um running parallel to that is any of your efforts with planning and I know you hired two students to work for you over the summer. Can you talk a little bit about that?

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, so those two students were actually part of the whole process last year, they were on that on the marketing subcommittee, um as well as a larger planning committee. And we had some other students who did participate as well, but these students kind of stayed with it consistently. And it was really due to advocacy of one of the, uh, faculty members who was on the, uh, subcommittee for marketing and whatnot, who advocate and say, “Hey, how about we leverage these two students who have some background in design, graphic design, as well as also pay them, which I was, you know, supportive of once, once I let the ideas sink in (laughs). So they had to actually to think it was July 1, so much of June, they had to each produce, uh… I think I asked between two and four versions of a poster and each of them would submit, and then myself and a few other people kind of look at them and so and sort of landed on the one that we used from much of our programming, or promotion rather. So hopefully, we will continue that process, so you know, I really have the hopes to kind of promote it more widely, instead of just focus on the two, that was just a first year kind of thing. It was convenient. But very, it was similar to Imagine RIT where there's a whole kind of announcement and “hey, students submit your designs”, and then there's a selection to the designs, we hope to get there at some point.

LANDYN HATCH: Yeah, I was going to ask you that, because you know, RIT, Visual Culture is so important here and you know, branding, cohesiveness and consistency. Um, as the sort of originator of the event, did you have a sort of visual in mind for what you wanted it to look like in terms of the branding and marketing piece? Or did you let the students just—

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, that was a, it was a balance, um, and I played the person in the middle trying to balance so we do have marketing standards that come from our mark— marketing, communications University Office and then our division of diversity and inclusion has its own standards. Um, I was very clear that we need to abide by those standards, but also have some wiggle room to allow for these students to have greater flexibility in design very similar to how we have for Imagine RIT. That doesn't fall into the traditional way of us marketing things on a regular basis, so I wanted to make sure we could mirror that process, um, but I didn't have a particular image in mind, I really wanted it to be, uh, student informed in this case, but also created in some way and that's the best way that I can put it. Not just words on a screen or on a poster, um, but something that would jump out the folks. And that went into our decision making and where we landed this, the one that we chose was the brightest colors, right, was closely tied to the general admission of the um, of the event. So that definitely played into that decision.

LANDYN HATCH: So we're into August, we have the student Jay Riley. Correct? Who did the fabulous poster design, and then the events in October. So what were you doing in that period once the semester ramped up?

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, most of that was doing last minute checks with those who have, uh, submitted a proposal, have been accepted, just to kind of say, “Hey, do– we accept your proposal, please let us know if you confirm this.” So there's a little bit of that. Some of that revolves a little more, a little bit of chasing down some folks, uh, then really deciding on when is going to be the announcement for registration. So that would, that took up a lot of that time and how we would do that. What would that look like? So I worked with some on marketing professionals to kind of talk through that as an option. Um, and then we landed with really kind of laying out what the sessions would be, and allow people to kind of make those choices, you know, about that. Outside of that, that was just the kind of additional legit event planning logistics that, you know, most people don't pay as much attention to, but that we had to kind of really think of what additional promotional things do we need to have? Catering was, is that all set up and ready? Are the rooms res— you know, reserved and have what they need?

LANDYN HATCH: And so describe to us your day of experience. You’ve done all this great work, you've gotten to this great point, you know, what was it like?

TAJ SMITH: Well, my experience was busy and hectic, to be honest (laughs). It's hard for any organizer or event planner to ever really enjoy the event themselves because you're managing all the

logistics behind the scenes so that the participants can have a quality experience. But that said, the parts that I was able to kind of be present for for a little bit of time, you know, I saw people who were engaged, and whatever space that they were in, um engaged in a topic engaged in conversation, or whatever the activity might have been. So that definitely stood out. Um, I felt the level of um, excitement from others, um, as well that you don't often get to see on our campus. It happens, but it happens at smaller kind of events, but not all of us attend those events. So this opportunity to have something campus wide, um, really brought that out for people, I think they were hungry for the for the space, whether they agree or disagree with the content is sort of separate, but they were definitely hungry or needed this kind of space is what I observed, but also a lot of feedback, uh that I did receive.

LANDYN HATCH: Did you have any maybe favorite moments that you witnessed or participated in?

TAJ SMITH: Um. You know, one stands, uh, out right now. When I was in the sort of main, our main space in Fireside Lounge where we had registration table, food and some level of entertainment in the library present, uh, their project. I think, watching some of… there was some faculty there who were having a good time, right, we're doing some of the dance instruction and I hadn’t seen them in that space before, right, I've only seen them in one on one conversation or talking about the work. So to see them, I guess let loose a little bit was, was nice to sort of see and observe that for the five minutes I was in that space (laughs). Um, you know, and I also think that we have a lot of events on our campus and a lot of those happen to be in Ingle Auditorium. And Ingle Auditorium isn't the greatest design in terms of the layout, but I was pleasantly surprised by the attendance, particularly at the closing, um, because we don't, in my experience at events, I've tended that space, we usually don’t have that many people in there and it's an auditorium that holds quite a few people. So those are two moments, um, that I think really, you know, stand out for me.

LANDYN HATCH: And then Taj, you kind of alluded to this, um, just before but you know, how do you mitigate pushback for events like this?

TAJ SMITH: Uh, one is to expect it. Um, with anything that is new, there's always going to be challenges or resistance to it. So one to expect it and I'm pretty good at that (laughs) of doing that. I think uh, two is to make sure you're listening, actively listening, um because somebody might be presenting you with a perspective you haven't considered before and you need to be open to making that pivot or change um, in that moment in that day, right? There's a lot of stuff you could do afterwards, um, so you know, those are the two things that sort of come, you know, come to my mind on it.

LANDYN HATCH: And so this is kind of a loaded question, but going into Together RIT and you've done all this planning and all this behind the scenes work. How did you define success for that event?

TAJ SMITH: That's a very good question. Um… Me, I'm a realist and so I like to keep my, my expectations realistic. And so success in terms of numbers, I had said all along, if we get 3 400 people,

I'd be happy. And we were roughly around, you know, those, those numbers in terms of participation. So that was one kind of check and marker of success. Then as I read through some of the um, submissions we received for the sort of post survey, um, reading through how people experienced a day, gave me insight into what might have been successful, and obviously also need some improvement, but those are probably the two ways that I g– gauged it and then also following up with the volunteers, we have many volunteers, probably at least 20 plus volunteers and day of volunteers. And getting a sense of how, what their experiences were like, and checking in with them and um, having them articulate what was successful about their space. So like I said, I couldn't be everywhere, I tried. (Laughs) I probably got to maybe 65% of the programming, but uh, definitely didn’t get to some other ones.

LANDYN HATCH: And is there any volunteer or presenter feedback from the event that stands out to you?

TAJ SMITH: Um, yeah, I mean, I think on the positive side of it, um, that hunger that I mentioned earlier, a lot of people mentioned that in different ways of phrasing that, but uh and, and wanting to see this happen again, you know, because you can have an event like this, and a campus wide event, and sometimes those things are hit or miss. (Laughs) But to have people say, for the most part, we want to see this again, with a few tweaks, was one of the big positive ones. You know, I think from a critical standpoint, which I largely would agree with, um, one of the dominant forms of feedback were, um, just some of the improving the communication around, uh, registration and uh, room location for the day. And we had anticipated some of that would happen. Uh, we were limited by some systems that we're using. But nonetheless, it's something that kind of pay attention to so that the user experience can be better for next time.

LANDYN HATCH: And then, what are your long term goals for this event?

TAJ SMITH: Yeah, well, I think to, uh, continue with, I don't have a number of years to say, like, well, it's gonna be 20 years, it was going to be a staple program for 50 plus, I don't know. So um, I'm not thinking that far, far out, but definitely to see it return next year, to see um, it become a little uh, a full day, rather than the kind of half day experience, which was a lot of the feedback we did receive as well. Um, so we're working on that, there's some calendar challenges with that. Um, and, and two other things, definitely like to see more student engagement, uh because a lot of— we didn't have that much feedback from students, um but the feedback that we get is the sense that they didn’t, instead, the students didn’t feel like this was open to them. They felt that it was just open to faculty and staff, despite our many efforts (laughs) to try to, to address that that's what was their feeling and so we need to think about that, honor that. I also think in better, doing a better job engaging some of our, um, some hourly staff that we have, because I didn't see their presence. And I know, I know that, you know, campus wasn't shut down, so people have to work. (Laughs) They still have to keep the place up, people have to work to support the event. Um, but I would like to see greater uh, participation um, from those especially work in facilities. Um, so that's a long term goal for me to kind of work on and figure out how we can increase that presence and population um, you know, for the day.

LANDYN HATCH: All right Taj. So in true StoryBooth fashion, I'm going to ask you to respond to one or more of our Together RIT prompts, um, and at this time, you know, please just be sure to read out the prompt before responding.

TAJ SMITH: So just point, you want me to connect these questions, to the day of the event?

LANDYN HATCH: Yeah, or just your experience, your perspective?

TAJ SMITH: Um. You know what, I think that I’ll start with the first one, “Why was it important for you to participate in this event?” Um, obviously, besides (laughs) the clear reasons that I was designated as the kind of lead organizer of the event, but also recognizing everybody has some kind of influence on other people, um, I know I have some influence on some people on campus and so me showing up, um, is important for that population. Right? Me also, during the process of creating this event, um, as a Black African American man, making sure that I'm saying, “Hey, we need to not only learn about our identities, as Black people, but also the racial and ethnic identities of other people.” And so making sure to advocate that there was space for that in the programming, um and to also encourage people to step outside their comfort zone, whatever that is, um, sort of attend sessions that you just don't know, everything that you know, things about already. So I think that that's, you know, what I would say, for this first question. Um, you know, I guess tying into the second one, since I'm on that topic, which is “As a person of color, attending a predominantly white institution, what has your experience been as a student or employee at RIT?” So I've been here my fourth year. My experience, like other people's experiences, group informed, but also individual informed. Um, I will say, for me, it's been largely a positive experience. Now, what goes into, what goes into that as I work in the division of diversity inclusion. So generally, right, we, as employees in this space value that, you know, space value, that kind of conversation, I know that my peers who do not work in a space like that have a more difficult time having those conversations, because that's not what the content of their environment is, right. Um, so recognize that my environment makes it very easy to be who I want to be and have the conversations that I want to have. Um, also, my title as a director, right, comes with a level of power and status, um that makes my experience different than other people who may share uh, common racial, or gender identity. So because of all of that, like, my experience has been largely great, wonderful, um, not a big, no really major hurdles for me personally. Um, I also think that, ‘cause I'm, well, I've been here four years, I'm still relatively an outsider, right? I didn’t grow up in Rochester, um, I came from other institutions before I worked here and so I bring that not necessarily global, but kind of regional geographical divers— experience, to the topic of race and racism within college and I've seen the extreme examples, I've seen in places that do it really well. Um, and so I bring all that with me to my experience, um, and so that allows me to kind of see the things that RIT is doing really well versus some of my peers who might have been here for a longer time, and they'll have something else to compare it to. Um, and then I could also see where there's challenges, but I've also seen that challenge on my last two jobs. So it's not RIT, it's a larger higher education issue. Right. So all of that said that kind of, that explains why I have this unique experience of it largely being a positive, you know, piece also as an intersection as being a man as well plays a role. All right, those things that I don't have to face that a woman of any racial background has to face, but also a woman of color faces a particular kind of mixture of racism and sexism on it, on this campus, which I do think sometimes is greater, um, than those of us who are men of color, but positionality also influences that…

Um, focus on the last one, “How, in your experience, does RIT talk about race? What chan— What changes would you like to see implemented regarding Campus Conversations?” So I think there's a lot of individuals and small groups who want to and do have conversations about racial diversity in healthy and celebratory ways, and then want to or have conversations about racism as a negative side of that conversation. The challenge is, how do we do that as an entire campus, across disciplines, across departments, across divisions that we don't do, you know, to my, based on my experience. So I would like to see more of that and I think others would like to see more of that, because I think some folks on campus don't feel like they can have these conversations in their units. But would very much like to have them with others outside of their unit. (laughs) And how does one go about doing that? And so I find folks um, either feel constrained by the structures around them, or personally constrain themselves, to step outside of their space to have these conversations with others. So what happens is that programming that I end up developing, helps fill that gap, it gives them a mechanism to have the conversation, um, and hopefully, the skills and a comfort level and confidence that come with that. So I do think we can do more of that intentional, um, conversation as well as, you know, other people bring up actions, I do think talking is an action. It can't be the only action that one engages in, but it is an action and an important one, because we actually don't do it across differences as much as we think we do. Um, and so, um, you know, I think, I think that's important and there's a lot of actions being done, but I think when you're, when, when you're in an environment where silos a real thing. You look at the RIT, from your lens in your silo, and your silo might not be doing anything, right, we're not doing as much as you want. But for me, I'm privileged in my position, and I get to see though the, not the whole picture, but I get to kind of see more. Um, and so I could see who's doing what and who's not doing what more easily than others. And so I feel more encouraged by that, because I have access to people who really want to do the work and who are doing the work, versus folks who don't have that experience. So I’ll end there.

LANDYN HATCH: Okay. Um, so we're almost done. One question that I did want to ask you related to the StoryBooth, is that, um, students are responding very well to our identity based questions. Um, you know, students are— the question that you answered, you know, “as a person of color attending a predominantly white institution”, students are liking that. They're liking having some sort of platform to share their experience, and then being represented within the collections. But I wanted to ask you, you know, how can the archives engage in these conversations that you're articulating? You know, because we have the collection, we have these responses, we're going to put them on a web platform, so they can be represented that way. But what else can we be doing in your opinion?

TAJ SMITH: Well, I will say, one, that's, that's what you're doing is important in a big step. Because, as far as I know, and I haven't gone into the archives (laughs), but I know there’s gaps in our history, right? And so that's important to capture in RIT, again, is not alone in not tracking some of that history. Outside of that, you know, are there interactive ways that people can engage with what you're uploading, whether that be on the website itself, social media, um, you know, do you put some of these recordings out there into the world, people respond on, on Instagram or something? So I think that could be one, one way. You know, I think what we've, you know, we've started to enter into this kind of, um, collaboration partnership for the heritage months I think will be very uh, useful to really uh, to everybody but also for you all as archives slash library, right, to be more visible, be more accessible, uh, rather than how traditional ways we thought about the library, right? Um, versus people come to you versus you going to them. So, I do think that will prove to be useful as, as we kind of build that into the culture.

Um. You know, I think, I forget, I think it was a couple years ago before the pandemic really hit, and I forget who had this charge, but the library was doing, they called them like conversations, um around diversity broadly. And so that can be one way where you all are facilitating the conversation, creating the content, so just not archiving the content, but also creating some of it. Um, the last thing that I can think of is making sure to enhance our collections, you know, um and I don't know how often students use library, libraries anymore in terms of the collections, um because I don't have that experience anymore. But when I access it, I know we have gaps, right? In our database. When I'm trying to find the film or something in the my, why don't we have this? This is like a staple thing, why don't we have this in our collection? Now I know we kind of use some films on demand or the places that might have it and I think those are good, but I also don't think a lot of people know about those tools. Um, so um, I think those are other ways in terms of increasing the collection, um, and showcasing that collection over time, would also be, you know, very useful.

LANDYN HATCH: Alright, Taj, and is there anything else that we didn't discuss today that maybe you wanted to cover?

TAJ SMITH: I think the last thing I'll add for Together RIT is, um, just making sure you know I want to get the message out that this event isn't just going to focus on race and ethnicity moving forward, I think, because of where it started from and or birthed out of that, and who's driving it now. Um, that is some people's understanding and we may do it again next year in terms of that, that topic, um, but we will hope, I'm hopeful that we will also look at other kinds of diversity, um, celebratory ways and in critical ways. Um, because I think that's just a reality of our community (laughs), but also it engages people differently. And we don't make this one topic stale because after a while, we'll become stale in terms of the format and have a conversation about it. So that's one thing I definitely want to add, um, to the conversation. Other than that, I'm all set. So I appreciate it.

LANDYN HATCH: Thank you for your time.

TAJ SMITH: Thank you.