Intersxtion Community Reflection Paper

Texas A&M University is historically a predominately white, all-male college. Its traditions continue to enforce privileges of white and male identities. The IntersXtion community was created as a safe space to facilitate discussions over complex topics of social justice and diversity. Open discussions create an atmosphere for different ideas to be shared and ultimately learned from. The IntersXtion community hosts a monthly dialogue to discuss topics of social justice and diversity. The discussions have been over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and environmental justice. Each dialogue subject was chosen and presented by one of IntersXtion's peer-mentors. Each discussion begins with the presenting mentor setting out ground rules about the participants being respectful of each other. Also, the mentor creates an initial structure, over the given topic, then it is up to the participants to add input as they see fit. The mentor comes prepared with the

As mentors and advisors, we expected the community to come to events, like the discussions. Yet, the greatest difficulty was getting people to participate. This happened because we overlooked our jobs in creating an active community. If the members do not participate, then the organization is unable to accomplish its purpose. It is impossible to understand the difficulty of creating a new group. Form the outside we see changes groups make in social justice. Until you participate in such a group it is difficult to understand the triumphs and fails of organizing a collective to participate in social change. People can be passionate about social justice topics but without direction, there is little chance that that passion can turn in to advocacy which can affect social change. Most social justice movements begin with a group of individuals who come together to recognize a problem, then work in order to solve