Name: Safiah
Hometown: Murray, Kentucky
Year: Senior
Major: Medicine, Health, and Society
Minor: Spanish
Campus involvement: I am a part of the Multicultural Leadership Council (MLC) and actively participate in several organizations beneath its umbrella, such as the Southeast Asian Cultural Exchange (SACE), African Student Union (ASU), and the Muslim Student Association (MSA). I am also the chair of the Community Building Outreach and Diversity committee within Vanderbilt Student Government, a Resident Adviser in Warren and Moore, member of Jugal Vandy, and last but not least, I am a sister of Sigma Lambda Gamma National Sorority, Incorporated.
I wasn’t even aware that VSG had a Diversity committee. What do you hope to accomplish as its chair? I want to work alongside organizations that seek to empower any type of minority on Vanderbilt’s campus, as well as encourage people of all different backgrounds to become better acquainted with one another. I feel very strongly that college is one of the only experiences in your life where you will be surrounded by people of many different cultures and experiences and it would be a shame for someone to miss out on something like that.
Were you the brainchild behind the Diversity committee? No, it preexisted me, but we did revamp it in a sense. This past year, I performed in the same type of role and that’s where “Talk to Me” and other similar events originated. So while I didn’t create the committee, I did give it more concrete goals for the future, such as a diversity mission.
Now I know that you take great pride in being a part of the SLG sisterhood. What is it like to be in a multicultural sorority? It’s really cool. You know a lot of people join Greek life to find people similar to them in order to form friend groups. That’s fine and all, but I wanted to meet people of different backgrounds so that I could share my culture with them and in turn, learn about their cultures. I also wanted a strong sisterhood and SLG was a great fit for me. There’s a saying that we have that says “A Gamma comes in all different shapes, sizes, colors, and ethnicities.” That was really empowering to me and on top of that I wanted to program events, and I didn’t really know how to do that yet in a way that was personal to me. Through SLG we were able to do “Unveiling the Hijab,” which was incredible for me because I got a lot of questions (some not very well thought out) at Vanderbilt and I really wanted to educate my community, so we did this event in conjunction with MSA. It was so heartening to see 120 people come out to an event that I planned because that was something that meant so much to me and the fact that the majority of the audience wasn’t Muslim and just interested in the topic really touched me because I literally had just thought of this event and I couldn’t believe that it actually came this far. I think this was a really big reason why I joined SLG because they’d had mini-weeks in the past and any member of the sorority was able to create an event based on something that they were passionate about. It was also really cool when we did World Hijab Day and approximately 60 girls attended and it was really one of the most eye-opening discussions that I had ever participated in at Vanderbilt.
What is your favorite thing about Vanderbilt? I feel like Vanderbilt is the perfect size. It’s not too big, it’s not too small, and you could meet a new person everyday if you really wanted to. You can also make a name for yourself here and create a community that is really close and tightknit. Because of that, I think that Vanderbilt is incredibly unique because you are able to have a large impact if you want to. I don’t know how “Talk to Me” would work on a campus that had 30,000 students and it just blows my mind to think about it. At this type of school, you’re able to do whatever it is that you want and that has a lot to do with Vanderbilt’s size.
What are your career aspirations? I really want to go into public health. Whatever I do, I want to be advocating for and helping people.