As the BME Campaign President, my job is to direct the committee and encourage action to help further the presence and well-being of BME students here at Cambridge, whether that be panel events, protests, or forums. My most important job as President though is to be supportive, and help bring the visions of my amazing, talented, and forward-thinking committee members to fruition. I’ve always been a big believer in the idea that if you have a problem with what’s being or not being done then fixing it yourself, and there was no better way for me to combat this than being a part of the BME Campaign. This has given me the opportunity to do more actively to support the BME community here in Cambridge, and has given me the platform to open up conversations which need to be had in these spaces, such as things surrounding Mental Health within our community, understanding and using language to successfully raise awareness of and combat the issues we face within these institutions, and supporting and uplifting the voices of intersecting marginalised identities in a nuanced way.

This year, we as a committee really want to focus on making those spaces and opening up intracommunity dialogues. Our aim is to centre ourselves, as students and faculty, and address the things we see as necessary or relevant, regardless of outsider perspectives. One of the main ways we’re planning on doing this is by hosting panels and holding topical forums about BME-specific issues, finding ways of reconciling this with the images we have of ourselves, and the ways in which we relate with each other. We want to ensure that all BME students from all backgrounds feel comfortable in this space, and able to be themselves fully in ways that perhaps they aren’t ordinarily allowed to due to social, economic, or cultural restraints. Our main goal is to continue anti-racist initiatives, for which we have established an Anti-Racist Task Force to encourage others to work with us to these ends, and also continually seeking to demystify and make more transparent the PREVENT policies across the University by working closely with BME officers across colleges.