During Wildcat Welcome, Weinberg freshman Katrina Kuntz attended an affinity space for multiracial students hosted by Multicultural Student Affairs. After the experience, she felt she was “missing out on” the opportunity to embrace her multiracial identity.

After the event, MSA Assistant Director Christine Munteanu told students in her breakout room to reach out if they were interested in restarting the defunct Mixed Race Student Coalition, a club designed to create a space for multiracial students or those with an interest in mixed race affairs.

“Being mixed can feel really isolating, so I think creating space for shared experiences around that identity is really important,” Munteanu said.

Munteanu said the Mixed Race Student Coalition became inactive a couple years ago when students who were heavily involved graduated. She connected the students interested in starting up the group again with Student Organizations and Activities to help them register.

The students have renamed the group Multiracial Identity Xperience Education and Dialogue Student Association. The purpose of MIXED is to create a community for multiracial students and raise awareness of their presence on campus, according to its constitution.

“I’m half Korean, and I’m very White-passing,” Kuntz, who now serves as the club’s president, said. “I’ve always kind of struggled to feel like I could claim my Korean side. Having that space (during Wildcat Welcome) where I could fully embrace the fact that I was multiracial without feeling like I needed to claim one side or the other was really nice.”

CA Davis, an adviser of MIXED and digital storyteller and producer at NU’s Media and Design Studio, said he hopes to offer an opportunity for “larger discourse” around feelings of isolation that sometimes come with being mixed race.

“I hope to do that in a way that gives the students a space to talk about more typical conversations of not fitting in, but then to also talk about why don’t we fit in and how history has influenced those feelings,” he said.

Weinberg freshman and MIXED treasurer Elizabeth O’Brien said the group wants to recreate the space she and others had during Wildcat Welcome for the rest of the Northwestern community.

O’Brien added that the club plans to host movie nights, guest speakers, debate nights to discuss multiracial topics and other activities to get to know each other.

“No one really ever makes clubs for mixed people, even though it’s a really needed community,” O’Brien said. “Creating a space like this is really important to build this community among people who think that maybe no one else can relate to them.”

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