Annenberg Cross-Cultural Student Association to create a safe and welcoming environment for all USC students

After the Instagram account @black_at_usc shared testimonies from USC community members about their experiences with racial injustice and microaggressions, journalism professor Miki Turner felt motivated to create change within Annenberg after reading posts about the school’s culture. To create a safe environment for all students in Annenberg, Turner created the Annenberg Cross-Cultural Student Association. 

“The best way to get through this moment is to increase awareness,” Turner said. “And I’ve always said that the key to ending racism is for everyone to celebrate everyone’s differences.”

The organization is meant to empower students of diverse backgrounds, as USC is a predominantly white institution. Turner asked students and faculty to fill certain positions in ACCSA and said she wanted ACCSA’s leadership to represent different races and cultures. 

Co-chair Alyna Santos, a senior majoring in communication, said that being in a leadership position as a person of color for the organization is important as it shows the group values the inputs of people from different backgrounds and cultures.

“Diversity may be people of color in the club … inclusion includes people of color having agency in the club,” Santos said. “Having control or having power [when] someone who isn’t a person of color would have otherwise … is why this club is really empowering because everyone has agency and control over the club.”

Co-chair Jillian Carroll, a junior majoring in journalism, said in the early stages of creating the organization, Turner asked her for ways in which Annenberg could improve its inclusion efforts. Carroll said one of her main priorities was to create a safe space for students to openly share negative experiences that they have had at USC, regardless of their race, ethnicity or gender.

“I personally felt like I was lucky that I did feel like I had some people I could go and talk to,” Carroll said. “But I had been talking with a lot of students … who had negative experiences in the classroom but felt that they couldn’t necessarily go to another professor or someone else in Annenberg … worrying about the fact that they might receive some sort of backlash.” 

The organization is structured through a variety of sub-cultural committees, including subgroups that focus on the needs of Black, Asian, LGBTQ+, Latinx, disabled and international students. These groups come together to discuss issues and plan events for all students to attend.

Last week, the group hosted an Election Day town hall for the Annenberg community because members of ACCSA felt it was important to create a space for students to discuss their election opinions and concerns openly and to make students aware of mental health resources, Carroll said. 

The organization will continue to have a presence through events, forums and speakers to listen to all voices in the community and will be a consistent presence at Annenberg in the future, according to Carroll. 

Creating this organization within Annenberg was particularly important, Turner said, because students at the school are training to be communication, public relations and journalism professionals who will have the opportunity to shape narratives put out into society.  

Turner said she hopes ACCSA will expand across campus at different schools to teach students how to collaborate and engage with peers from different cultural backgrounds. 

“I think the first inclination for most of the schools is to create a Black Student Association or an Asian Student Association … when you do that, you’re really not teaching the students how to interact with other people who don’t look like them,” Turner said. “You need to learn how to deal with one another because you’re going to have to work with some of these people.”