by Aaliyah Amos
After deciding to transfer from what she described as her “tiny,” predominantly white liberal arts college after a few semesters, Nalini Venugopal chose Rutgers University-Newark, in large part because of its on-campus diversity.
“I didn’t want to be in such a white male-valued environment anymore,” Venugopal, a senior at Rutgers-Newark, recalled. But she also wanted to explore women’s studies — just not through an exclusively white lens.
“I struggled with calling myself a feminist for a long time because my earliest exposure to feminism was very white-girl, girl-boss, Barbie,” said Venugopal, a native of India who attended high school abroad before enrolling in St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland for three semesters. In three semesters at St. John’s, she says, “I