About Me & SIT Human Rights
Ahem… Hi!
My name is Sammy Cake. My pronouns are she/they, I am a rising junior at Longwood University (in the lovely town of Farmville, Virginia), and I am a Sociology major with a double-minor in Women’s, Sexuality, and Gender Studies and Race and Ethnic Studies.
I grew up in an upper-middle class suburb just outside of Richmond, Virginia with one brother and two step-siblings (a sister and a brother) on a street where my divorced parents happily reside two houses apart from one another. I’m white, I’m cis, I’m queer, I’ve thru-hiked the Appalachian and Long Trails, and every day I try to make a little bit of progress towards my ultimate goal of becoming an active anti-racist change agent in my community.
This coming semester (the fall of 2024) I will have the privilege of participating in a comparative study abroad program with the School for International Training. This program focuses on human rights, and it aims to help students develop a deep, multilayered understanding of how communities and individuals are giving momentum to grassroots human rights movements across the countries of Nepal, Jordan, Chile, and America. Along with my peers, I will compare and contrast cross-cultural systems of government, social distributions of power, social divisions of labor, social hierarchies, the role and presence of welfare states, political freedom and oppression, definitions of human rights, and the emergence, progression, and goals of social movements.
So, why this program? Why choose to embark on this kind of social, physical, spiritual, and emotional journey? I think it’s really, really important for me to do this. Like, as important as it was for me to set out alone at 18 to walk 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine. Unlike my trek on the A.T, however, this program is about far more than personal ambition. In many ways, I view my participation in this opportunity as my first big step towards the rest of my life- after all, how can I possibly aspire to make the world more equal and just if I do not have a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing struggles for equality and justice that surround me on all sides, locally and globally?
I believe strongly that nothing on this planet happens within a vacuum, especially when it comes to protest, prejudice, and policy (and history has proven that to be true, time and time again). It’s important for me, as a born-with-a-silver-spoon-raised-in-a-liberal-echo-chamber-crunchy-granola-queer-feminist-American-college-student-with-big-dreams kind of gal to participate in this program so that I know how to listen to the voices of those whose lives are very different from my own, so that I know how to incorporate those voices into my current and future activism, and so that I can do more to change America to value humanity in all it’s forms.
If you’re interested in following my journey, this blog is where I’ll detail and reflect on my experiences, thoughts, questions, and ideas regarding human rights, social justice, power, and privilege as they arise during my time abroad. Please feel free to reach out if you have any feedback on the content I create- I am always open to having a discussion. Thanks for your time!
Here’s my Instagram handle for more pictures and updates: @a.sociologist.abroad
Here’s where you can learn more about the Appalachian Trail and long-distance hiking in America! : https://appalachiantrail.org/explore/hike-the-a-t/
May 17, 2024