Riverdale’s Affinity Program Fosters Community and Productive Discourse
Riverdale’s seven affinity groups - AWARE, JiNY, M&Ms, HOLA, BSA, QSA, and AAA - offer spaces for students to connect through conversation.
Ally Samuels/The Riverdale Review
A key part of Riverdale’s mission is building community. Certain affinity groups are focused on providing safe spaces within the community, and others strive to educate students through discussion. All groups aim to make Riverdale a safe environment and celebrate diversity.
The Community Engagement Team, which guides the affinity program, ensured that all seven groups - Hispanic Organization for Latino Awareness (HOLA), Multiracial and Multiethnic Students (M&Ms), Black Student Alliance (BSA), Asian America Alliance (AAA), Jewish in New York (JiNY), Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE), and Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) - would be safe spaces by training their student leaders over the summer to be effective mediators.
During an interview about HOLA, junior YoYo Feliz explained, “In a school that is predominantly white, it’s nice for students with similar identifiers to talk about common experiences.”
Senior Mari Caffey, one of the leaders of BSA, shared that affinities are a necessity because “Riverdale does not feel like a safe space to every student.” Senior Nicole Van Brugge, a leader of M&Ms, explained that for multiracial or multiethnic students, “sometimes being mixed affects you more than a specific racial demographic.”
As for JiNY, some students questioned its necessity when it was first introduced. Senior Sabrina Schlesinger, one of its leaders, explained that “Jewish identity is a culture, a religion, and an ethnicity...the Jewish experience in New York is very different from the Jewish experience in other places as to how it interacts with class [and] the population of Jews in New York.” Jewish students need a safe space to learn about themselves. In addition to providing a safe space for students in their meetings, affinity groups also focus on making Riverdale a safe space as a whole. Caffey believes that sharing the Black experience at Riverdale with the whole school community will make Riverdale a safer environment.
She hopes “that eventually [we] won’t need affinity groups because [we] don’t need a space to have to talk about these issues separately from the entire school.” In order to reach that point, junior Julia Stark, co-leader of AWARE, said that White students must question “their role in the world considering the privilege they have.” She also noted that white students are great at trying to do better after a major event happens, “but then it is very easy to let that feeling [of guilt] go” as time goes on. Joining the AWARE affinity group is an excellent way for white students to stay engaged.
QSA is similar to AWARE in its education-driven approach, but the alliance meets at a different time than the race-based affinities. Its goal is to get straight students involved in making Riverdale a queer-safe community and to teach them how to be good allies.
Lastly, all of the affinity leaders are excited for their respective heritage months in the upcoming year. In order to give the school an opportunity to immerse themselves in Hispanic culture, HOLA is planning a movie showing and a Zoom Hispanic cooking class.
JiNY plans on having a showcase of the cultural and historical aspects of Judaism during the Jewish holidays and during their heritage month in April. QSA plans to educate students of all grades about pronouns, what queerness looks like, and queer history. Moreover, the QSA intends to invite guest speakers, particularly artists in New York, to celebrate their work. During these uncertain times, it has become all the more important for students to engage in the educational discussions that take place during affinity meetings. The leaders and members of these groups urge the entire student body to join the conversation in order to be part of the solution.