The residents of 200 Church St., the anti-oppression house, are in the process of creating an anti-oppression library in order to preserve recovered student-of color-newspapers from the last twenty years.
In September, Jean Pockrus ’08 discovered clusters of old issues of The Ankh, El Foco Latino, Avatar and Hermes newspapers piled up in some of the rooms of the house.
The surviving issues of these newspapers are currently being kept in the lounge of 200 Church St.
The residents of the anti-oppression house, however, have larger plans for the discovered newspapers. According to Pockrus, the head of the Anti-Oppression library, the residents of 200 Church want to create an online archive of the newspapers as well as set up a permanent historical exhibit of the legacy of the papers through photos and posters.
While the newspapers may be old, the residents of the anti-oppression house do not see the newspapers’ concerns as dated.
“The anti-oppression library will serve to reiterate the struggle to secure 200 Church as a safe space for freshmen students of color,” said Aparna Iyer ’08.
The residents also felt that the library was a necessary memorial to the campus’ political past. Elana Cook ’08 noted that the newspapers contain stories and images of events that this generation of Wesleyan students will not know.
“It commemorates the actions taken to secure student-of-color housing here at Wesleyan,” said Elana Cook ’08. “There are pictures of students of color storming [the] Campus Center.”
El Foco Latino and the Avatar, the Asian/Asian American newspaper, are no longer in print. The Avatar’s first issue, and the only one in the anti-oppression library, was published in 2001.
There are, however, several issues of El Foco Latino in the library starting from March, 1995 and ending with the issue April/May 1998.
After reading through the issues of El Foco Latino, Pockrus said that they were valuable resources to anyone interested in learning about the Latino community at Wesleyan some ten years ago.
“It is essential reading on the history of Wesleyan, especially the April/May 1998 issue, which is 48 pages long,” Pockrus said.
According to Pockrus, the April/May 1998 issue honors the class of ’73, naming it the “the first instrumental class of Latinos at this institution.”
The Ankh is currently the only student-of-color newspaper that is presently in print at Wesleyan. It had been out of print since May 2001 but was restarted in the fall of 2004 by four freshmen that year.
In the past, The Ankh has primarily been an African American publication. Since its return this past fall, however, the publication has served as a literary outlet for all students of color.
“As far as I know, there is no other publication on campus that [provides a space for all students of color],” said Jason Lalor ’07, current Editor-in-Chief of the Ankh and one of the students instrumental in resuscitating the newspaper. “It seems like one of the problems students of color face sometimes is not being heard, and I feel like The Ankh, along with the library, will address our concerns.”
What the residents of 200 Church St. hope to see is more students reading the vintage newspapers and using them to think about the future of student-of-color issues.
“The library is a great idea, because it will turn 200 Church into a resource for the Wesleyan community rather than just a house,” said Tameir Holder ’08.
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