Wil Spencer

CESL Program: Community Scholars Program

Major: Sociology

Wil Spencer ‘27 (he/him) is a sociology student from Chatham, New York. In the spring semester of his freshman year, Wil joined the UMass Prison Abolition Collective (PAC), where he heard about the Community Scholars Program (CSP) during a one-on-one conversation with current CSP student, Grace Lei ‘26. As someone who felt disjointed in his activism work on campus, Wil saw CSP as a perfect opportunity to get involved with longer-term, structured organizing. 

Coming from work with PAC, Wil joined the abolition focus area of CSP and partnered with Youth for Equity and Action (YEA), a club at Northampton High School that aims to implement restorative practices into the school system. On a typical day, Wil starts at the middle school, where he supervises lunches, and then heads over to the high school to check-in with the students on their projects and participate in an after school circle with anyone who wants to attend. As a youth centered program, Wil and his supervisor are constantly making sure that they are not taking over projects and are giving students the opportunity to manage projects that they are interested in. Lately, the students have been focused on voicing racial injustice in the school system and community, including going to the State House to speak on the harms that restorative practices can help address.

Thinking about the academic work, Wil says it primarily involves readings outside of class and in-depth discussions and breakdowns of the readings in class. While he finds the readings helpful, Wil says, “What I apply the most is the social skills that I’m learning in class, like how to engage in discussion and how to actively listen and be present. I’m constantly reflecting on where I am in a space and how I’m contributing to the community guidelines that are so integral to the CSP classroom.” These social skills, along with readings on restorative practices, have been crucial to his work with YEA. “There were a lot of sources that I was able to pull knowledge from, so I was coming in with a base level that I’m now building up,” Wil says of the relationship between his work in-class and out in the community. 

Reflecting on the classroom culture, Wil explains, “We all really want to be close to each other because that automatically makes the work easier. I find that actually really helps for discussions because it’s created this kind of environment where, since we all know each other, there’s less of a fear of speaking and talking about your personal experiences.” The close relationships that people have formed within class also make for a better learning experience due to the accountability that people feel to one another. “Since we all care so much about the program and we all care about building relationships with each other and with Deborah [Keisch] and with the material, it’s clear that people are putting in a lot of work and that really pays off in a classroom setting.”  

After Wil graduates from CSP and from UMass, he knows that he will take away the sense of community that CSP has instilled within him. Having just finished Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown for an assigned reading, Wil says, “Adrienne Marie Brown constantly hammers down the idea of what we pay attention to grows. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in my friendships, in my relationships, in my family dynamics, in my classes, and in my general mindset. If I’m paying attention to all the terrible things that are happening, then they’re just going to grow and fester in my mind. But if I pay attention to the beautiful work that the students at YEA are doing or the work that I’m doing to build radical friendships with my close housemates and friends, then that’s what’s going to grow. I think a big thing that I’m going to take away is choosing what I want to put my attention on and how I want to feed it.”