News & Events The Joy in Social Justice

Bulaong Ramiz-Hall joined Amherst as director of the Multicultural Resource Center in August. A graduate of Wesleyan University, where she also worked as assistant director of student activities, Ramiz-Hall has a long history of working on issues of equity and access at the university level—experience that she is translating into her new work as MRC director.

How did you become interested in social justice issues?
I think because of the very multicultural family I grew up in: My mother is from Puerto Rico; she’s a Catholic Puerto Rican. My father’s family are black southerners. My father and my grandmother are Muslim, so I was raised Muslim. I was raised by my grandmother and she was involved in the Black Panther movement.

What was it like to attend a Catholic school while being raised with Islamic faith?
Growing up, I tried to figure out how do I fit in. Because my mother was Catholic, sometimes I would sneak rosary beads under my uniform and then wear them when I got to school. But then holidays like Ramadan would come around and I would go to the mosque every weekend with my grandmother and I would see my community deeply involved in fasting. I felt very proud to be a part of that community.

What was your first experience as an activist?
I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in seventh grade at my little Catholic school. I just sat down. They called my father to come to the school and he was like, “My daughter does not have to do anything she doesn’t want to do.” And they just let me be. So I think that was my first radical act of defiance. [At Wesleyan University] I really started to home in on the work I was passionate about. I was merging my social experience with my academic experience and it turned into this passion for equity and justice. That led me to thinking of the experiences that people like me have in higher education—specifically at a predominantly white institution.

How did those experiences translate into the work you do now?
Multicultural centers for me are not neutral spaces. They are spaces that have to speak out against injustice, especially when it affects marginalized populations. I think it’s very easy in social justice work to dwell on the awfulness of the world: the racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. We can’t just dwell on the bad; we have to challenge systems and structures, and we have to do it from a place of love.

What are some of your plans for the Multicultural Resource Center?
While I think celebrating cultural differences is important, I want to take that next step and think about systemic inequity as well. It’s not enough to just do Black History Month and then not talk about the way in which black students are experiencing Amherst. I need to try to figure out how to open this space so that other communities and first-year students feel like, “This is also for me.” The biggest thing I did when I first came in here was I turned the couch around. The back of the couch was to the door, so people would look into this space and see people’s backs. Turning the couch makes a world of difference because it opens people to the front door.

On September 29th, the Queer Resource Center, the Multicultural Resource Center, and the Women's & Gender Center held an open house.  Photos by Peter Connolly ’18.