BY ANSLEY KEANE ’23
STAFF WRITER
The Mount Holyoke College MoZone peer educators sought to help community members discover how to transform their values into action and practice allyship through their annual event More Than An Ally Week, which took place from April 5 to April 9 this year.
The MoZone Peer Education program is a social justice education program at Mount Holyoke College in which trained students — peer educators — facilitate modules and workshops for community members to discuss and learn about social justice and diversity. MoZone’s mission, which appears on their Mount Holyoke webpage, is “to increase awareness of social justice, diversity, equity and inclusion issues on campus by providing students with shared language and knowledge.”
In addition to organizing More Than An Ally Week, the MoZone peer educators support the Mount Holyoke community through social justice education programming throughout the year. “Our work primarily lies in facilitating educational modules that tackle various issues such as race and ethnicity, nationality and nation of origin, religion and spirituality and gender and sexual orientation, to name a few. We also provide dialogues for student orgs and staff and faculty who request them,” Allison Ping-Benguiat ’22, one of the MoZone peer educators, said.
This year, the MoZone peer educators hosted their first-ever remote More Than An Ally Week, which featured the panel, “A Discussion About Allyship, Accompliceship and Advocacy in an Age of Polarization,” with keynote speaker and moderator JLove Calderón, a renowned social justice writer and educator. The panelists included Riché Barnes, associate professor and chair of gender studies; Gabriel Hall, assistant director of Campus Diversity Programming and LGBTQ Initiatives; Amelia Ender, chaplain to the College and adviser to the Jewish community; Kelly Lam ’22, cultural center assistant for the Asian Center for Empowerment; and Lucas Wilson, professor of Africana studies and economics and chair of economics.
More Than An Ally Week concluded on April 9 with a workshop entitled “Are You Awake, Woke or Are You Doing The Work? Developing Strategies Toward Being More Than Just An Ally in an Age of Polarization.” This workshop was an opportunity for community members to develop their own action plans for how they can put their values into action and create meaningful change. The 2021 More Than An Ally Week also included an interactive social media campaign.
“More Than An Ally Week is organized annually by MoZone. The intention of this week is to provide events with info on the differences between allyship and accompliceship, as well as resources aiding the development of the latter,” Ping-Benguiat explained. “Our hope is that attendees and participants of our More Than An Ally Week not only better understand the crucial differences between allyship and accompliceship, but also have the tools and knowledge to support their activism.”
Ping-Benguiat hopes that by partaking in More Than An Ally week, participants have a better understanding of the active nature of allyship and accompliceship. “Understanding an ally or accomplice is not an identity but rather a state of being is crucial. Being involved with social justice movements that do not specifically affect our own identities is an imperfect lifelong process, not a fixed identity,” Ping-Benguiat noted.
Ping-Benguiat also explained what members of the Mount Holyoke community can do to further their allyship and gave some examples of what allyship might look like, showing that allyship is not a one-size-fits-all process. “Allyship is mental and/or physical work. You can provide support by helping set up for events and attending rallies and by offering non-physical services [and] things [like] bookkeeping, legal [help], graphic design, money, boosting events [and more],” Ping-Benguiat said.
Practicing allyship also means listening and responding to the needs of marginalized groups as they themselves express those needs. “Rather than assume the needs of a marginalized group, sit back and listen to students and activists at MHC,” Ping-Benguiat added. “Be wary of virtue signaling. Allyship is dependent on real work, not on receiving recognition or gratitude.”
Through events like More Than An Ally Week and the MoZone peer education program’s other resources, Mount Holyoke College community members can develop the knowledge and skills needed to practice allyship during and after their time at Mount Holyoke.