Robin Maxile joined the Intercultural Community Center (ICC) in summer 2021, just as Occidental began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, Maxile has served as the Associate Director of Racial Equity and an interim director for the ICC for six months. Maxile will leave Occidental Nov. 1.
According to Maxile, the role was born from the Black Advocacy Plan, where Occidental’s Black community highlighted their experiences and what was needed to improve their sense of belonging on campus. She said that she was the first person to have this title and believes it was, in a way, made for her.
“I always wanted to work with students, and help shape them, and help them grow and learn,” Maxile said. “I always had a need to understand someone’s ‘why they do something, what makes them tick’ or ‘why did they make the decisions that they make?’ [The position] combined those things.”
Maxile said she wanted her role to be organic and based on the actual student experience on campus, so she started by putting herself in spaces that were student-centered. She said she wanted to meet students where they were, literally.
“I remember one of my students — I love him to death — I showed up at his soccer practice because we were supposed to meet and he was busy and we couldn’t get our schedule to match. So I was like, ‘You know what, I’ll just come see your practice,'” Maxile said.
According to Maxile, she has advised, mentored and guided numerous affinity groups on campus, including the Black Student Alliance, Asian Pacific Islander Desi-American Association, Latine Student Union, Middle Eastern and North African Students’ Association and the South Asian Students Association. She said she has also worked with RAs in Occidental’s Themed Living Communities.
“My goal for being an adviser was to reshape how students lean on us as their advisers, as their counselors and mentors,” Maxile said. “You can lean on us, you can ask us for support. I’m going to show up, and I know that there are other folks on campus that want to show up.”
This work comprises what Maxile calls collective care work, which she said entails fostering an environment where people feel seen and included, without having to hide any parts of their identity. Within this collective care work, Maxile has been involved in the Multicultural Summer Institute (MSI) with Alexandra Puerto, associate professor of history and chair of Latinx and Latin American Studies.
“Collective care was an emergent idea at the ICC before Robin’s arrival,” Puerto said via email. “Over the last two and a half years, though, Robin’s generosity with knowledge sharing, talent as a counselor and vision and innovation with programming established a more solid foundation upon which we can continue to build racial equity at the college. Her work has been a real gift to our community.”
According to Puerto, the two have worked to better align academic and co-curricular aspects of the MSI program and, more generally, discuss student well-being across campus.
“Witnessing Robin mentoring students, especially Black students, in real-time will forever stay with me,” she said. “She draws upon deep academic expertise, broad lived experience and profound love in incomparable ways to support our students’ growth and wellbeing. The great trust that students place in Robin stands out in all the memories.”
Within Maxile’s work at the ICC, she said she has also worked closely with administrative assistant Aly Escobar, who has been at the ICC for just over a year.
“[Maxile] made it so much easier for me to get to know the students when they would walk in [to the ICC]. She’d include me in all the conversations and, as the administrative assistant, I do spend a lot of time at my desk,” Escobar said. “But then she [made me] realize that, ‘No, you can be with the students as well.’”
According to Escobar, Maxile goes above and beyond for students, and the ICC wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t for all the work she has done.
“Her position is very student-oriented in a sense that she works for the college, but she works more for the student,” Escobar said. “It’s all about the students for her.”
Associate Athletic Director and Head Women’s Basketball Coach Anahit Aladzhanyan said that Maxile makes everyone feel seen and heard and that her outstanding work and passion will be tough to follow. Over the past two years, she said the pair focused on creating open and safe environments for students on campus and have co-sponsored events between the athletics department and the ICC.
“Robin joined us on a team trip last year to Dallas, Texas and we had a blast,” Aladzhanyan said via email. “Her presence and energy was (and is) very upbeat and positive and she helped make our trip special for our students.”
As for the future plans of the ICC, Maxile said that the ICC is planning on doing a search rather quickly, but there is no one currently to fill her role.
“Oxy is a unique place,” she said. “The next person that comes in has to be willing to see that uniqueness.”
Maxile, on the other hand, said she’s planning on publishing papers and finishing her dissertation as she pursues a Ph.D. at Syracuse University.
“The dissertation delves into the intricacies of Black students’ experiences within higher education institutions, with an emphasis on the nuances of racial equity, community and belonging,” Maxile said. “So what I hope to accomplish is to offer higher education stakeholders something tangible, like a blueprint for how to support Black students.”
According to Maxile, she also recently finished a paper on her vision for racial equity on a college campus through a collective care lens, which is currently under peer review. She said her work with Occidental’s Black community has brought this to life, and she is grateful and humbled for that.
“Racial equity is a communal effort. It takes everyone to be involved. It cannot be just one person that you have on campus, and you expect them to have a vision for racial equity,” Maxile said. “Everyone in leadership needs to have some kind of vision for racial equity. You may not be an expert in it, but that’s why you have experts, so use them. At the same time, you can’t expect your experts to do everything if you’re not willing to invest in it yourself.”
Contact Mollie Barnes at mbarnes@oxy.edu
