Dear Steph, 

Hey sis, hope everything is going well.  

I have this favorite place here on campus. It’s inside the basement of the student union buildings (weirdly 3 buildings attached to one another). I’m able to sit here and do my classwork and gain a work study opportunity just from my connections. The space is called the SMP (Scholar Mentorship Program) Lounge, it’s 3 rooms and a couple of offices. You can come to my favorite part of the space, the center, there’s a smartboard on one wall next to a door and a whiteboard, a sink towards the back wall with cabinets for storage, a school desk on wheels with a DELL computer on it, a headset, a telephone, and a frame of the schedule we have to take shifts on. The following room is an open room concept, you know no door, connecting to the center to a computer lounge that you can just walk through a wall having several computers on grey desks (with wheels) and neon green rolling chairs so people that are a part of this program can come and utilize, and another door in the middle of the wall that people can leave to use the bathroom and come back in through. The paint job and colors of this place is so welcoming, the center is a grey blue and white colored walls, and the doors are a wood marble looking color with painted glass windows in them. 

I love the fact that this is a great place on campus to connect with both higher education students, faculty, and just a place that you can relax in. As I sit here, I can see and experience people in conversation, air conditioning and heat, laughing, helping each other with homework, getting up and being able to sign in and out to get their office hours for the first-year student course that requires it, and just students that like the space and use it to do their classwork or homework. I even realize the motion censored lights that sometimes scare people from shutting off at random times. I use it to do my homework and to connect with the amazing people in it. It’s a place for people of minority groups to connect and interact, have a sense of family. Mark Rumnit is the director of the program currently, however he knew the founder of the program Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis as he told the students of the program about her vision and how it has helped him as a person as well as helping current students with scholarship opportunities and more. He also told us of how particularly the New Paltz black studies department that is connected to this place is the second black studies department founded in the nation but can be seen on the New Paltz website that it is in fact, “one of the first and oldest of its kind in the nation”.  

Being in this place makes me feel engaged, motivated, and happy as I have met some of the people, I talk to from this campus the most in this space. I have been able to just break out of my shell in this place and even being able to speak with Mark and realize how outgoing and passionate he is for his career is so interesting, he’s done so much that he can just educate us on all of it in this space. 

I hope you come to visit.  

Sincerely,  

Bri (peace out) 

Work Cited

“Scholar’s Mentorship Program.” SUNY New Paltz | Scholar’s Mentorship Program |

     History, https://www.newpaltz.edu/smp/history/.

“The Department of Black Studies.” SUNY New Paltz | The Department of Black Studies | The Department of Black

     Studies, https://www.newpaltz.edu/blackstudies/.