From Feb. 1 to Feb. 3, over 150 students and faculty members gathered for the Posse Foundation’s annual Posse Plus Retreat.
Each year, students and faculty spend a weekend discussing pressing issues across the nation and campus to work towards initiating change. This year, the retreat celebrated the Posse Foundation’s 30th anniversary, creating a theme for the retreat, “The State of Our Union.”
Starting in 1989, the Posse Foundation has recruited and trained 8,490 students identified for their leadership and academic potential. Now across 10 major cities in the U.S., Hamilton College is home to two Posses: Miami and Boston.
The weekend began with efforts to create a safe environment to help facilitate the conversations that were going to be held throughout the course of the weekend. Attendees were reassured that the conference was a safe space to share and challenge ideas by being encouraged to advance effective and inclusive dialogue.
The conference then opened with a video shot by the Posse Foundation that highlighted the issues of violence on the streets, homelessness, illegal immigration, the American Dream, poverty, health, and prosperity in the small town of Guadalupe, Arizona. The video was a precursor to the wide variety topics that were going to be discussed that weekend, including immigration, #MeToo, education, policing and prisons, healthcare, identity, and gentrification.
This year’s retreat varied widely from previous years, which tended to focus on just one topic. Prior to the retreat, Posse Scholars filled out a survey on what issues they wanted to hear at their retreat. Ultimately, this year led to a myriad of issues.
“It felt like that’s where we needed to go with this conversation. We get to build a better future but we need to ask ‘How do we get there together?’” said retreat facilitator Dax.
The first event of the retreat emphasized values of education, work, and income, and how they are affected across generations. In a simulation of the game “Life,” groups of three people were a family, each person representing a different generation. Families began with a predetermined number of assets and, one by one, went through the different stations, deciding life aspects like whether they went to a public or private K-12, pursued a higher education, got a job, and bought a house.
Along the way, there were “Life Happens” cards that simulated unexpected life occurrences that could set you back or helped you move forward. The activity emphasized the values of hard work, identity, and integrity that the unit also encounters when making decisions.
After, the conference room was transformed into a gallery walk. There were 10 stations spanning in topics from education, healthcare, policing in schools, masculinity and #MeToo, mental health, mass incarceration, immigration, gentrification, and beyond binaries.
Attendees were also encouraged to create stations with a topic they wanted to talk about. Topics that were added included climate change and a discussion on the removal of Posse Boston at Hamilton. Each station was equipped with discussion questions tailored to “surface the tensions, critiques, and talk about them openly,” according to facilitators.
One of the main goals of the retreat was to engage with personal identities. Another retreat facilitator, Mihal, shared a saying, “The personal is political,” emphasizing how our identities and personal experiences shape our own political ideologies. To engage with the crossroads of identity and politics, different news headlines were scattered on the floor, color-coded by their topic: sexuality, race, politics, immigration, gender, socioeconomic class.
Attendees were prompted to pick up a headline that interested them and create a group of two people, known as a dyad. From there, discussion question cards were handed out, and after the first set of questions, dyads were told to group with another dyad and share what they discussed, and then group with another group of four.
Attendees were given yellow cards to write their own headlines they wished to see on the news and scatter them on the floor. Some of them read: “Percentage of non-Whites in colleges in America sees record-breaking increase,” “U.S. backs plan to address climate change,” “DACA program extended: path to citizenship.”
The retreat also shined a light on the troubles that underrepresented groups face on campus. “In this room alone we draw our heritage from Nigeria, Jamaica, Cuba, Africa, Mexico, Norway, China, Middle East,” said Dax. Students shared how they struggled fitting in on campus and finding a space where they felt like they belonged.
“There isn’t a space on campus where I can be completely myself. I always have to sacrifice one aspect of my identity for another,” shared Saphire Ruiz ’22.
Dealing with identity in a different manner, the retreat facilitators read “Where I’m From,” by George Ella Lyon and encouraged all attendees to write their own version of the poem. The conference room was converted to a Greek chorus auditorium-style where attendees were encouraged to share pieces of their writing. Attendees were also encouraged to accept the silence comfortably.
The retreat also featured some Posse traditions. Supplied with post-it notes and pens, attendees were encouraged to write each other “warm fuzzies,” notes that make you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. Saturday night featured the “No Talent Talent Show.” Performing rap performances, dance battles, stand-up comedy, and singing, attendees were able to express themselves in different art forms. Whether they had talent or not, everyone was welcomed by applause.
The final day of the retreat was geared towards taking the issues discussed in the groups and encountering methods for how to create change. Groups of about 10 were faced with a red critical question card, a yellow card for ideas on how to tackle the issue, and a green card for a personal commitment to creating change. Afterwards, all attendees were split into six groups that were called one at a time, while others sat with their eyes closed. Then, Posse trainers read out prompts which said “Tap someone who took a risk this weekend” or “Tap someone who you believe in.”
The Posse Foundation was founded in part due to the struggle that underrepresented groups face on college campuses. According to the Foundation’s website, the model “works for both students and college campuses and is rooted in the belief that a small, diverse group of talented students — a Posse — carefully selected and trained, can serve as a catalyst for individual and community development.”
“Just like the student who inspired the founding of Posse,” said Luis Morales ’20, “I don’t think that I would have stayed at Hamilton had it not been for my Posse.”
