Affinity Groups off to a Strong Start
Millbrook School takes great care to ensure every student feels accepted on campus, no matter where they’ve come from. One of the ways the community achieves that goal is through Affinity Groups formed by students around common identifiers such as race, gender, and religion.
Millbrook’s dean of Diversity Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB), Patrice King, oversees the Affinity Group program. She explained the value these gatherings provide.
“This program allows us to support students in a healthy development of a sense of self, and that looks different for each student,” she said. “Affinity Groups give them a space to share their experience with other members of the community that have a similar identifier and feel empowered to engage deeply in that space”
She also emphasized the benefits Affinity Groups bring to the community at large. The goal, she stated, is “creating a space for the people who identify in those groups in a way that’s inclusive and helping the broader community understand why having those spaces is not exclusionary to the majority-identifying students.”
This year’s Affinity Groups held their initial meetings of the 2024-2025 school year on the final Friday in September. More than 70 students participated, and options included Asian and Pacific Islander, Black and African American, Jewish, Latinx, and LGBTQ groups. Those who identified with multiple groups were able to float between gatherings as they established expectations for their spaces in the coming year of meetings.
King noted that while Affinity Groups have been a successful part of Millbrook’s club programming, there is room for growth. For instance, she is strategizing options for increasing the number of meetings each semester to provide more opportunities for students to engage in formalized conversations about identity, further supporting the interactions that take place informally around campus each day.
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