While DePauw’s campus geared up for the beginning of Panhellenic and Interfraternity Council recruitment, a variety of Greencastle residents came together in the Starbucks conference room for a social justice solidarity meeting.
The meeting, led in part by J.D. Grove, owner of local store Conspire, and Bruce Zink, focused on the concerns of the larger Greencastle community and Putnam County. Greencastle citizens, ranging from local business owners to DePauw professors, gathered to discuss forming an allied organization to combat social justice issues facing the Greencastle community.
Zink, who formerly worked with an LGBT activist organization while living in Cincinnati, had hoped to set up an organized board by the end of this first meeting. Instead, the meeting was a public dialogue and many participants were focused on different organizations they could bring to Greencastle, such as GLSEN.
“This is a tool for high schools,” said Grove. “It’s a way to create safe spaces in high schools, it works best if there’s an educator, somebody inside the school to make this happen.”
Sophomore Ray Rhoden, who is also a Greencastle residents hopes that the program will be far-reaching. “I think that it’s really important that we not only focus on the Greencastle high school, but the surrounding schools as well,” Rhoden said.
Grove hopes to register her boutique, Conspire, as a certified safe zone. The registration process includes training on how to be an ally to LGBTQ communities and create environments that are safe, welcoming and inclusive.
“I’m a little focused on this because of the amount of kids that come to Conspire looking for a place to feel safe and to talk and they’ve told me that there’s just not support at the high school here,” said Grove. “Actually one of the trans people I know is 16 and dropped out of school because of this.”
Short survey papers were stacked on the table and asked questions about personal skills concerning social justice projects, as well as appraising interest for projects in the LGBT community and a group called SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice).
Zink collected the surveys at the conclusion of the meeting and hopes to use them as a way to organize interested members into sub-groups and appoint leaders. “My personal focus is on organizing the townies,” said Zink. “I was surprised there was so much response from DePauw students.”
A few resources from DePauw were compared to what was available for Greencastle residents, but most admitted to feelings of ostracization when it came to the school. With campus resources like the Cultural Resource Center and United DePauw, residents hoped to use these as inspiration for more locally focused support.
“DePauw has these events that are supposedly open to the public, but they’re on DePauw’s campus, so even if it is open to the public, like community members really are welcome, they’re still kind of ‘I’m an outsider at this event’,” said senior MJ Hansen, “I think students are generally more comfortable going into Greencastle than Greencastle members are coming into DePauw.”
Upon the meeting’s conclusion participants continued to exchanged information and ideas.
The meeting introduced a discussion that will be continued in the next few weeks in order to define the group’s leadership hierarchy, sub-groups for defining issues, and to define the mission of the organization. “I want my community to stand up and say ‘we are not going to tolerate this’,” said Zink.
The next meeting is schedule for Feb. 9 at 6 p.m., but the location of the meeting had yet to be decided by the time of publication.