About

This project highlights the student activisms of #NotagainSU, my rhetorical analysis of their movement, and a celebration of all things surrounding student movements. A full project overview is available here to further explain the theories behind this project; my decision making process; and the relationship between spark zones, erotic energy, signifying, and rhetorical reclamation. 

 

Who are you?

My name is Taylor Waits. I am a Black and queer doctoral candidate (soon to be graduate) of English at the University of Pittsburgh. I am an educator, activist, deejay, writer, wife, and mother of two fur babies. I started a student movement and now turned community organization #ChangeRapeCulture (#CRC) in 2019 with my cofounder Kimiya Factory after finding out a significant number of students, faculty, and staff were experiencing sexual violence on and off campus. After months of protest, loads of cease and desists notifications, dozens of meetings with different department heads, thousands of followers, meetings with local journalists, and community events - our movement was born. We knew our collective power as students. We had experienced institutional racism and we had decided to expand past higher education institutions for our work. A few months after starting #CRC I was accepted into my doctoral program. I use my experiences in higher education to advocate for Black students within the K-12 and higher education systems. I hope to graduate and start working within educational administration and eventually open my own high school for Black children in the future. 

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Acknowledgements

I want to highlight all of the thought provokers that inspire me throughout this project: Yasmine Anderson, Audre Lorde, Apala Kundu, Paolo Friere, Louis Maraj, Sojourner Truth, Sera Mathew, Carmen Kynard, Valerie Kinloch, Tea (Tatyana) Johnson, Benjamin Miller, Elizabeth Pitts, Lidania Colon, Chawanna Chambers,bell hooks Alexis Mcgee, and Andre Brock.

 

Aims of this project.

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This project is to be interacted with in this order: 1)Homepage, 2) About, 3) Timeline, 4) Rhetorical Moves, and 5) Remix.

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As a student activist myself, I was enraptured in the going ons of #NotAgainSU. I helped raise funds for hot food amongst Rhetoric scholars in the Fall of 2019, my first semester of grad school. I had just gone through something very similar with #CRC at my own institution, and I knew how little folks empower student activisms and student voices. I wanted to make sure I was on the right side of these students - all students’ histories. I found it important to use what power I do have as a graduate instructor to highlight the relentless fervor that comes from student, faculty and staff activists in higher education.

 

My dissertation marries the Black digital practices employed by #NotAgainSU student organizers and the tradition of Black digital activism cyberculture from the inception of the internet to 2024. Creating a website, a music remix of protest chants, two detailed videos, and an accompanying project overview allows me to share ideas surrounding student rhetoric amongst multiple modalities in order to explore those ideas as critical literature, digital rhetoric, and pedagogy strategies being used in praxis.

 

Critical pedagogies aim to disrupt, decolonize, and criticize traditional models of learning and knowledge production. This project acts as a starting point for learning how to prioritize student voice, understanding the importance of student-created critical literature and pedagogy; and offering strategies to begin creating spaces that encourage transparency amongst instructors and learners.

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When it comes to this project, I hope to add the counter narratives of Black student activists to the nationwide rhetorically- focused conversations amongst school management and educational leadership. Adding student-led initiatives to the bank of literature surrounding student rhetoric and educational leadership will help to create new protocols, training, and initiatives that can create a new generation of educational leaders. Additionally, I hope all viewers of the content can learn to demystify stereotypes of students (in this case at a university but students of all ages) that constrain the idea that students need to be molded, are lacking expertise, and don’t know what’s best for their education. As anti-ableist pedagogue Suzanne Stoltz affirms, “When we promote one right way to be or act, we contribute to the pressure students feel to meet norms, to see those who don’t as abnormal and less valuable. (Stolz, 71).”

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The core of this project are the student stories from the movement. 

 

The decision to house my project on a free access website follows generations of what Andre Brock highlights as Black Digital Practice. Websites, private group chats and social media have always been some sources for revolutionaries to relay information to their communities, allies, and haters through a Black feminist practice known as signifyin’. 

 

This website models the colors of the #NotagainSU movement: Black, Navy Blue, Orange, and White. Page Photo provided by Syracuse University.