Last semester, the Brown University Mahjong Club hosted the “best iteration” yet of their biannual tournament, club treasurer Lucas Pham ’27 told The Herald. According to Pham, this success was enabled by the $1,000 the club received from the Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion Fund.
This year, the Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion Fund, a funding opportunity that student clubs can apply for under the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, distributed about $260,000 to various student organizations — more than double the $100,000 it gave out last year, according to Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Matthew Guterl.
For the Mahjong Club, the money went toward purchasing equipment for their tournament, where each semester attendees enjoy catered Chinese food, learn how to play the game and compete.
“The funding was able to help us continue to have a large interest in the club from new members, because we had the funding and the equipment to support the big interest,” Pham said.
But not all clubs’ requests for funding were granted, some student organization leaders said. Without a formalized application process for the Pathways funding until the fall of 2024, the fund used to give out larger awards but to fewer recipients, Guterl wrote in an email to The Herald. Now, eligibility requirements include descriptions of the initiative, its budget and its outcomes, which need to contribute to an inclusive environment.
“We were aiming for a more equitable distribution of Pathways support across a broader spectrum of student-run and student-centered events,” Guterl wrote.
After advertising the program “heavily” this fall, the ODI received a larger number of proposals, according to Guterl.
This year’s increased funding will support the execution of over 60 events to be hosted by student clubs, departments, centers and institutes — nearly four times more than last year’s 16. Guterl wrote that the Pathways fund offers one-time support, so proposals for funding must be renewed each year.
The Black Star Journal, Brown’s student newspaper dedicated to Black student life, has received $5,000 from the fund for the past two years, a decrease from the $8,000 they received in the 2023–24 academic year, according to Kourtney Beauvais ’26, co-editor-in-chief of The Black Star Journal.
The funding helps to cover newspaper printing costs and events like the Black Star Gala. This year’s gala aimed to “create community and spread the work of Black artists on campus and at RISD,” as well as helped the journal with membership engagement and recruitment, Beauvais said.
Pham, who is also co-president of the Vietnamese Student Association, said the ODI rejected VSA’s Pathways funding application last semester for their programming for the Mid-Autumn Festival, a major celebration in East Asian culture.
Pham said the rejection was “surprising,” especially because VSA had previously received funding for their annual spring dinner, which is typically a smaller event than the Mid-Autumn Festival, he said. In order to host the latter event, the VSA “had to scrap together some money at the last minute.”
“We didn’t really have the funding we needed in order to buy all the things we needed to accurately celebrate the cultural event,” Pham said, noting that mooncakes, the traditional baked good for the holiday, are “kind of pricey.”
The Pathways fund is “a really great thing that we have on campus because it allows the broader community to be educated on different cultures or participate in events that celebrate diversity,” Pham said. But still, “it’s disappointing that we applied for and then weren’t able to get it, even though it was a really great event.”
Rachel Wicker is a senior staff writer covering affinity and identity. She is from Athens, Georgia and plans on concentrating in English on the nonfiction track and International and Public Affairs. Outside of writing, she enjoys reading books of any genre and doing yoga.
