A New Center, a Third Space Speaker and a Senior Director
By Dr. John Johnson, Vice President for Inclusive Excellence
Whitman College will unveil the new Third Space Center on Tuesday, Oct. 1 at 4 p.m. on the Fouts Center for Visual Arts lawn. A project three years in the making, the Third Space Center is a campus resource designed to center the needs, concerns, interests, histories and cultures of the wide-ranging communities of color at Whitman.
With campus climate data and other sources indicating that many students of color at Whitman experience feelings of exclusion or marginalization in the predominantly white Whitman environment, it was essential that we create and provide a space where communities of color were centered, affirmed and that showcased the richness and cultural wealth of Black, Indigenous and all racialized communities of color. In the fall of 2021, a request was made to repurpose a Whitman owned faculty/staff rental unit located at 219 Marcus St. to better meet the needs of BIPOC students at Whitman. Use of this space would mean that the college would forgo revenue generated from monthly rent payments indefinitely and would also require some investment to modify and design the space to serve as a student sanctuary and resource space. The Cabinet, President’s Budget Advisory Committee and the Board of Trustees all endorsed this effort.
During the 2022–2023 academic year, a consultative process with students and a few invested staff members was coordinated to establish a vision for the interior of the space. Using a layout of the existing floor plan, inclusive design principles and guided by budget parameters, renderings were generated for the space that captured much of what the design committee proposed. During the 2023–2024 academic year, renovations to the interior of the space were initiated. The temporary closure of Marcus Street for the Junior/Senior Village construction prompted some exterior renovations as well that were completed this past summer.
The new Third Space Center will provide Whitman students of color with a space where they can feel safe from microaggressions and have the ability to fully express their identities. While open to all, it is important that our community appreciate that this space is intended to address campus climate conditions where students of color reported feeling less welcome, less safe, and less included. The Center serves an important purpose in advancing inclusion and also organizes programs that can help the entire Whitman community better understand the complexities of race, racism and race relations.
During next Tuesday’s event, there will be remarks by representatives from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Division of Inclusive Excellence and President Bolton. Attendees will have the opportunity to tour the space. Shortly after the opening, there will be a Third Space Speaker Series event at 6 p.m. in Olin Auditorium featuring Connie Wun, Ph.D.. Wun is one of the co-founders of AAPI Women Lead, a queer, feminist, survivor-led and former sex-worker-led, community-based, intergenerational organization that works to end violence against Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (ANHPI) women, girls and nonbinary communities. Wun is a co-editor for the anthology “Abolition for the People” with Colin Kaepernick and Christopher Petrella. She is a former National Science Foundation Fellow, Soros Justice Fellow, UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Fellow, and received the Excellence in Civil Rights Award from the California Asian American and Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus in 2021. Wun earned her Ph.D. in Education from the University of California and is a scholar of race and gender-based violence, as well as a community organizer. She has been published in academic journals, anthologies, online platforms, and has appeared on Democracy Now!, MSNBC, NPR and a range of podcasts.
The Third Space Center will operate with reduced hours for the first week of operation in October with support from the part-time interim coordinator, Kaelyn Pyke, who has been instrumental in helping prepare to launch the center.
On Wednesday, Oct. 9, Dr. Jace Kaholokula Saplan will join the Whitman College community as the Senior Director of Identity and Belonging and oversee the Third Space Center. Saplan holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Miami and obtained their undergraduate degree in Music from the University of Hawai‘i. Saplan has previously worked at the Kamehameha Schools in Hilo, Hawai‘i as a consultant and teacher coach. Saplan also has higher education faculty experience and recently served as the chair of one of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committees at Arizona State University where he led initiatives to diversify programming and curricula to be more reflective of student populations. He has also previously functioned as the Chair of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the National Association for Music Educators and as their Director of Affinity Groups. Saplan’s research focuses on the performance practice of Queen Lili‘uokalani’s choral compositions; multicultural perspectives in the choral rehearsal; intersections of choral pedagogy, gender and sexuality in communities of color; and Native Hawaiian agency in music.
To be clear, the Third Space Center is not the solution to the racial climate issues at Whitman. Over the last three years, we have embarked on a process to address many of the concerns raised by students of color at Whitman and we have more work to do to build institutional capacity to respond effectively to the needs of all students, staff and faculty. As that work continues to expand and evolve, we believe the Third Space Center will make a meaningful difference to the student experience.
