Diversity & Equity Statement

As a Media and Communications Studies student at the University of Washington Bothell, I have come to understand diversity and equity not as abstract ideals but as analytical lenses that sharpen the questions I ask and deepen the arguments I make. Two artifacts from my coursework illustrate this development: a scene analysis of Dee Rees’ film Pariah, written for Introduction to Film Studies, and a climate-science case study on the 2021 Texas Winter Storm, written for Intro to Climate Science. Together, these works show my growing ability to recognize how intersecting identities shape lived experience, to name the relationships between power and difference, and to center the perspectives of historically marginalized communities in my analysis.

My scene analysis, written in fall 2024 for BIS 261 Intro Film Studies, examined the climactic confrontation scene in Pariah, a film centering Alike, a young Black lesbian navigating her identity in a world that punishes people like her. The assignment asked me to analyze how cinematic techniques communicate meaning, but engaging with the film seriously required me to grapple with the intersections of race, sexuality, and family. Alike is not simply queer; she is a Black teenager whose queerness collides with her mother’s expectations, her father’s avoidance, and the broader social pressures that police Black womanhood. In my analysis, I examined how the cinematographer uses claustrophobic close-ups and frenetic, documentary-style camera movement to trap the viewer inside the family’s argument, and how the camera pins Alike against the wall just as her mother’s accusations do verbally. I argued that these visual choices are not merely stylistic but communicate the specific violence of being forced to disclose one’s identity under threat. Writing this analysis pushed me to think carefully about how creative works can illuminate the lived experiences of marginalized people—and about my own responsibility as a viewer and writer to engage with those experiences thoughtfully rather than superficially. Rather than treating Alike’s coming-out as a simple plot point, I tried to honor the layers of identity the film presents, recognizing how race and sexuality compound the stakes of that single moment.

My second artifact, a case study written in winter 2025 for Intro to Climate Science, applied diversity and equity concerns to the 2021 Texas Winter Storm. While the assignment centered on climate science, I found that I could not tell the story of the storm honestly without addressing who suffered most and why. Drawing on climate research, engineering literature, and social-impact reporting, I documented how the failure of Texas’s deregulated, isolated power grid was not equally distributed: Black, Hispanic, and low-income communities experienced disproportionate mortality and economic loss. The deregulated market’s incentive structure had discouraged operators from winterizing critical equipment, and when the grid collapsed, the communities with the fewest resources bore the greatest burden. This artifact pushed me beyond describing a technical failure to asking whose failure it was and who paid the price. In the solutions I proposed (ranging from mandated infrastructure winterization to community-level support networks) I tried to address inequities at multiple scales, recognizing that meaningful change requires both structural reform and grassroots resilience.

Taken together, these artifacts reflect a developing capacity that aligns with the IAS diversity and equity learning objective: the ability to recognize and name historical and cultural relationships between power, knowledge, and difference. In my scene analysis, that meant understanding how a filmmaker uses visual language to depict the intersecting pressures of race and sexuality. In my climate-science essay, it meant refusing to treat a natural disaster as race-neutral and instead tracing how structural inequality determined who lived, who died, and who was left to rebuild. Both projects also reflect my growing awareness of my own position as a writer and analyst—I have learned that strong academic work requires not just technical competence but a willingness to ask who is centered, who is marginalized, and what systems produce those outcomes. I work to carry these questions forward into every project I undertake.