Courtesy of Claire Agatep
From Nov. 12-14, organizers hosted the annual Ray Warren Symposium on Race and Ethnic Studies. This year, the student-led symposium was focused on social justice through meaningful resistance. Across the three days of events, speakers discussed a wide variety of topics, but the symposium’s central theme of “sowing resistance” tied all of these presentations together.
The symposium featured a variety of events, including presentations from experts outside Lewis & Clark, a student research showcase, a fashion show, a traditional dance workshop and the concluding event, Race Monologues. The symposium was orchestrated by four LC students, Deenie Bulyalert ’27, Elisabeth Ducusin ’27, Jesicca Gabriela Garcia Bocaletti ’27 and Aylén Martinez ’26, who served as this year’s symposium co-chairs. Other organizers included the symposium’s director, Professor Kimberly Brodkin and various student and faculty volunteers.
In his keynote presentation, “The Anti-Authoritarian Playbook,” social justice activist Scot Nakagawa emphasized the historical power held by student groups fighting against authoritarian regimes.
“Throughout history, when authoritarians have seized power, it has often been students — young people your age approximately — who have recognized what time it was and turned the tide,” Nakagawa said.
Nakagawa gave examples of previous student movements and their tactics in order to encourage the LC community to follow in a similar fashion, fighting against an ongoing fascist governmental takeover through an organized, united front.
“In Serbia, students toppled the dictator everyone said was untouchable. In South Korea, students took down a military dictatorship backed by superpower. In Indonesia, students ended 32 years of authoritarian rule. In Chile, students forced constitutional reform against neoliberal order. In Hong Kong, students showed the world what democracy looks like. In Taiwan, students stopped an authoritarian trade deal and energized democracy,” Nakagawa said. “Every single one of these movements was told they couldn’t win, and every single one won anyway, not because they had more resources, not because they had better odds, and not because they faced less danger — it’s because they understood what time it was, and they moved.”
The Mossy Log spoke to the symposium’s co-chairs about the experience of planning and putting on the event series.
“I think it is really nice to have the Ray Warren Symposium to build this space for students to share their experiences, showcase their student work and to create community,” Garcia Bocaletti said.
She noted that creating safe spaces for representation like this is vital due the current era of political violence.
“Especially in moments like this, when there’s a lot of division and debate and a lot of attacks against different groups, I think having this symposium is really important to help students feel welcome, safe, valuable and to stand for them in some way,” Garcia Bocaletti said.
The symposium sought to both empower student voices and identities while advocating for political resistance.
Through the Race Against Disciplinary Boundaries: Student Research Showcase, students were given the chance to share their research, covering topics such as mixed racial identity, language gaps in natural disaster alerts, the effect of climate disaster on marginalized communities, and the work and methodology of a historical social activism group, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The event was moderated by symposium co-chair Deenie Bulyalert and presented the research of four Lewis & Clark undergraduates Meilin Beloney ’26, Jazmín Contreras ’26, Christiana San Diego ’27 and Blaise Harrison ’25.
Through events like the Fashion Show: Embodied Resistance, diversity could be seen by the student models’ design choices, which portrayed both cultural elements of clothing along with hints of more personalized and politically inspired aspects.
Kenji Yamamoto ’26, one of the fashion show participants, designed and modeled a traditional Japanese haori jacket that they sewed out of denim. The back of the haori read “American Dreaming” in letters made of cut out fabric. Underneath, they wore their father’s jinbei — traditional Japanese loungewear — with jeans and Timberlands.
“I wanted to make a piece in dedication to my dad, who immigrated to the US forty years ago, when he was my age. He came here as an international student with dreams of finding freedom of expression, autonomy over his career, and a new life. I think all these years later, like many immigrants in the U.S., he is still looking for this ‘American dream.’ That’s why my haori says ‘American Dreaming’ in the present tense to represent this ongoing search for an idealistic version of America that many immigrants are pursuing,” Yamamoto said in an interview with The Mossy Log.
Yamamoto explained how the blue denim jeans symbolized his cultural heritage.
“The blue denim helped me represent both my American and Japanese identities. The denim represents America, while the blue represents the ocean that separates my dad from his family and life back in Japan,” Yamamoto said.
Race Monologues concluded the Ray Warren Symposium. This event occurred in the Agnes Flanagan Chapel on the evening of Nov. 14. The monologues featured student speakers, who performed personal monologues that expressed their feelings and relationship towards race, culture and identity. Student attendees were asked to sit and listen to the honest, unfiltered frustrations of their peers.
“I hope people left feeling a bit uncomfortable in a positive way. I think liberal arts is constantly this negotiation between your comfort zone and pushing your boundaries. I hope everyone that attended the events left the events thinking that they might not agree, or they might have never thought in that way, and went home thinking critically, but also focusing on the voices that as a school, we tend to ignore in classrooms, for example,” Martinez said in an interview with The Mossy Log.
The co-chairs also discussed the difficulties of navigating LC and the larger world as people of color.
“This is a very vulnerable platform,” Martinez said of Race Monologues, “and as a person of color, we struggle a lot to make ourselves vulnerable. There’s a lot of expectations. There’s a lot of stigma around us in college in general.”
She emphasized the need to give space to students of color to talk about their academic journey and research, which often come with challenges invisible to white peers.
“When you give the space to someone to talk about their research, or when you give the space for students to talk about things like why they left home, it allows students to have more grace with themselves when they’re navigating this PWI (Predominantly White Institution),” Martinez said.
Educating others about systemic issues is a core tenet of the symposium’s mission.
“This symposium is an invitation to think with intention, feel with compassion, listen with openness, resist with purpose, and imagine new roots grounded in dignity, woven in community, fighting against injustice,” reads the description of the symposium on the LC webpage.
Bulyalert noted that another purpose of the symposium is to create an environment that expressly empowers the voices of students of color.
“I believe Ray Warren stands as a space for students of color to really share their thoughts and voices and see themselves represented in spaces that we don’t normally get to see ourselves represented on campus,” Bulyalert said in an interview with The Mossy Log.
Ducusin discussed her hope for attendees to find resonance in the event series.
“I hope people see themselves in the struggle, in the ongoing fight for justice, in the direction that the United States is going in. I think it’s really important to take the symposium as a whole,” Ducusin said. “We had so many different panels and workshops, but all of them kind of shared similar messages, where we are ordinary students at Lewis & Clark, and we can get involved, and we should see ourselves in struggles, not only on campus, but also in Portland, not only in Portland, but also everywhere else. Because I think when people don’t see themselves in the work being done, they won’t pay attention to it.”
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