- What is it?
The PPGAS-USP Permanent Affirmative Action Committee (CoPAF) was formalized in 2019. Composed of four students and two professors, it is a permanent arm of the Program Coordinating Committee (CCP), responsible for monitoring and offering support to students entering through affirmative action and proposing improvements to both the selection processes and the institutional support mechanisms for their permanence. In this sense, it represents an instance of communication and mediation between students, students entering through affirmative action, the Program and all its employees and professors.
2. Actions
- Promoting dialogue between students enrolled through affirmative action programs and PPGAS faculty members, aiming to identify difficulties faced by these students in their academic trajectory in the Program and proposing measures to overcome them;
- Monitoring the scholarship distribution process;
- Producing and analyzing data on changes in the profile of PPGAS/USP students after the implementation of the affirmative action policy;
- Promoting ongoing debates on structural racism and ableism in the university and in our society;
- Suggesting proposals that aim to improve the PPGAS/USP affirmative action policy.
In November 2019, the Committee held the 1st Meeting on Affirmative Actions at PPGAS, bringing together most of the students admitted through quotas and reserved places in previous selection processes. The meeting was essential to allow these students to share their impressions and difficulties experienced at PPGAS and to help the Committee develop practical strategies in light of the obstacles exposed. In this sense, the event was important to help better define the Committee's own objectives.
The CCP and CoPAF are aware of the ongoing efforts needed to improve our selection process and retention policies for black, mixed-race, indigenous, and disabled students in our Program. Our experience with affirmative action is still recent, and the Committee relies on the support of all PPGAS faculty and students to achieve its objectives.
Brief History of the Affirmative Action Policy in the Program
Collectives present at the University of São Paulo began the discussion about the need to implement affirmative actions at our university long before us. Among these groups, we can highlight the Black Consciousness Center (NCN), which began discussing quotas and advocating the political need for their implementation in the late 1980s, and, more recently, the Pro-quota Front, which has been active at the University since 2005.
The development of the Affirmative Action policy at PPGAS/USP was based on the need to recognize knowledge and epistemologies that have undergone a continuous process of invisibility. This mobilization began in October 2013, through an ongoing debate between students and faculty, with the aim of implementing Affirmative Actions for admission to our Master's and Doctorate courses, and resulted in the approval of an affirmative action proposal in 2014. The project faced an arduous institutional processing process, and its implementation may only occur in 2017. Throughout this process, students and faculty of the Program were able to contribute to the discussion on affirmative action and its implementation in other postgraduate programs, in addition to participating in the debate on the adoption of quotas in undergraduate studies at the University of São Paulo.
However, we understand that an effective affirmative action policy is not limited to adapting the selection process for entry into the Program. Actions before and after this stage are necessary. In addition to ensuring adequate recruitment and qualification of candidates - dissemination among potential interested parties, preparatory and extension courses, etc. -, it is essential to monitor entrants and continuously evaluate the affirmative action policy itself. And it is precisely in this second axis that Copaf's performance becomes fundamental.
Contact CoPAF via institutional email: uspacoesafirmat