Fourth-year College student Ashley Blackwell was recently named the 2015 recipient of the John T. Casteen III Diversity-Equity-Inclusion Leadership Award. This year marked the sixth year of the award with a total of eight recipients.
Marcus Martin, vice president and chief officer for diversity and equity, said the award is given to a community member who shows leadership in the promotion of diversity.
"The award honors a member of the University community who best demonstrates a dedication to leadership and the ability to create a setting in which the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion is paramount," Martin said in an email.
Martin said the selection committee reviews and scores nominating material as well as “activities and works that exemplified individual commitment, passion, leader and sustainable efforts to work towards diversity, equity and inclusion.” The nomination pool consists of community members ranging from students to staff and faculty.
Blackwell said she was surprised her efforts merited the award.
"I just would never imagined having this opportunity and this recognition just considering the work that I do with communities [is] often deemed peripheral to the university community, like low-income populations, communities of color, as well as Charlottesville residents," Blackwell said in her acceptance speech.
Martin said Blackwell's letter of nomination and supporting letters "superbly highlighted her tremendous passion for the commitment towards social justice … at the University of Virginia and beyond."
The award aims to promote diversity, equity and inclusion with a sustainable and quantifiable impact at the University and in the community. Blackwell said she came to the University from a difficult background, with a hopeful outlook to turn that situation around.
"I had this romantic notion that as soon as I entered college, I would automatically break the poverty cycle and my family’s financial circumstances would no longer be an issue," Blackwell said.
Blackwell said she quickly learned, through helping her mother navigate work and housing options in Charlottesville, that breaking the cycle would not be as easy as she had first imagined. She said she found the University impacts the Charlottesville community by raising the cost of living, thereby pushing many workers across the University community to take on two or three jobs.
Blackwell created a program known as United for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity. The program works not only to “address the issues and gaps in the support structure for low-income students, but also to work with the Charlottesville community ... to address barriers to employment for low-income residents.”
"We tend to put on a pedestal this southern white elite culture through traditions like Girls in Pearls and Guys in Ties, as well as Foxfield … changing and challenging these cultures and traditions is essential to the work that UFUSED does in order to create a space and create new traditions so that students from a variety of backgrounds can really create a sense of belonging here and be connected to this community," Blackwell said.
Blackwell also advocated for "transparency, accountability, and representation on the University's board of visitors to include students, faculty, staff [and] local Charlottesville residents.”
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