As Black History Month ends, students and staff look to improve student engagement in events
Cassandra Roshu | Asst. Photo Editor
On Feb. 1, the Schine student center hosted the Black and Brown Informational Fair to offer students the ability to learn more about Black and Blown student organizations. This event was part of SU’s celebration of Black History Month.
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While SU does a good job at creating spaces for marginalized communities, Jolisa Smith said it still needs to get the right “furniture” for these spaces in order to make them effective for the communities they serve.
“The thing about diversity, equity and inclusion is that a lot of the focus is on space and these spaces being created,” said Smith, a Student Engagement staff member. “But you can create a space and not have the right things within the space to make it comfortable enough for the people the space is created for.”
The issue is historical and systemic at Syracuse University, and while it can’t really be blamed on one individual, it still needs to be addressed nonetheless, Smith said. Now, as Black History Month comes to a close, SU students and staff members reflected on similar sentiments, noting the progress of the involvement of the university and also the elements that still need improvement.
This year’s events ranged from social and cultural, with music and dancing, to educational, offering the community a chance to learn about Black culture. The month started with a kick-off celebration, meant to highlight Black talent on campus, and a Black and Brown Informational Fair.
The fair was placed in Schine to engage more students in a space they frequent often. The event included a DJ who spent the morning playing R&B and various culturally-significant music to complement the fair.
While the music was meant to engage students and lift the energy up, some students complained that the DJ “scared” them, Smith said. Even with the aim to get everyone involved, microaggressions still created a divide.
“While there are opportunities for students who are not of color to engage, there’s not a heart or a willingness to (get to) a comfort level,” Smith said. “The ice hasn’t been broken yet and I don’t know whose fault it is, really.”
This year, the BHM Planning committee was intentionally made up of a variety of students and staff from different backgrounds on campus. Marissa Willingham, the Intercultural Collective manager, said that she and her team purposefully looked for staff members in Student Experience and Student Engagement for the committee to get their perspective on the types of events that would engage students best. The committee was made up of five students, eight staff members and one administration member.
However, some students still felt a lack of acknowledgement of the month from the colleges on campus. Senior Assul Larancuent said that while she felt like there was a lot of recognition of the month from offices like the Intercultural Collective and Student Engagement, she didn’t feel the same from the different schools and colleges on campus.
Black issues go beyond just culture, Larancuent said, and a lot of Black students face significant struggles within their major due to the programs being historically predominantly white.
“So far, I feel that this year specifically, I saw a huge turnout in the Black history events that were hosted mainly by Black students on campus,” Larancuent said. “However, I do feel like in the actual schools, there’s no acknowledgement of this month like specifically just for the School of Engineering.”
Some non-Black students like Jen Jordan spoke about how the hesitance to engage isn’t coming from a place of not wanting to learn but rather a place of caution. Jordan is aware that since SU is a predominantly white institution, there aren’t many spaces for students of color to be comfortable and find community in, so she was wary of attending some Black History Month events out of fear of overstepping her bounds or taking up space in an area where white students shouldn’t be the focus.
“It’s not that I feel like I can’t go. I just also feel like that space isn’t for me as a white student,” Jordan said. “It’s not that I’m not invited to the space, but also I feel like a lot of the celebration is for Black students. And that is a great thing and I can go if I want to, but maybe that’s not the first place that I should be on this campus.”
Jordan wasn’t alone in this sentiment, as some other non-Black students reiterated her feelings. Freshman Johannah Rennert said how the constant high volume of emails students get can sometimes make them lose track of the purpose of these events, thus making boundaries tricky.
Jordan Pierre, who serves as a member of the Black History Month Planning Committee, said that while Black students understand the hesitancy, they still want their non-Black counterparts to try to place themselves in those spaces so that they can better understand the struggles of Black students.
“We need to find ways or encourage people to put themselves in positions where they are the minority, because that’s how we learn most,” Pierre said. “Often, we don’t have that choice as Black students — to determine when we want to be the minority.”
While Black History Month is a time for the Black community to celebrate themselves and their culture, it is also an important chance for non-Black people to educate themselves on issues surrounding equity that are still prevalent on campus, Pierre said.
This year, the committee wanted to make a conscious effort at covering the different intersectionalities within Blackness and highlighting the contrasting identities Black people hold, Willingham said. They made a point of organizing events that cover topics like hair, sexuality, gender and ethnicity.
While the Black community on campus is being seen and heard more, students still feel that it is largely due to Black students, staff and faculty bringing attention to it. There isn’t as much collaboration as there could be with the non-Black community members.
“What I’ve experienced is that (Black History Month is) not really a campus wide phenomenon. It’s mostly for Black people, by Black people, which is also empowering in itself,” said sophomore Edikan Ekarika. “But I feel as though Black History Month was made to educate the masses, not just people who have experienced it themselves.”
Students understand that the university isn’t going to reach all students with the programming, but they can still do better at reaching more than just the communities affected by the topic, Ekarika said.
He feels as though the university could do a better job of making it known within the entirety of campus. Ekarika understands that there’s 20,000 people, but it would be good to at least reach a wider audience than those who are already impacted or affected.
Pierre and LS Jones, an administrative assistant for the New Student and Family Programs office and Planning Committee member, said the lack of engagement and involvement from non-Black community members is noted not only during Black History Month.
This year, the university hosted its first Fête at Syracuse Welcome. It was a celebratory end to the first launch of the pre-welcome program created for BIPOC students, a program both Jones and Pierre had significant roles in.
“I particularly don’t feel like my department was aware of Black culture, until I got there,” Jones said. “We got a pre-welcome program for every other religion and race but people of color. That’s mind-boggling to me.”
She spoke about how the lack of pre-welcome programming for students of color came as a surprise, considering all the protests focused on racial issues on campus and the racial violence that occurred in Buffalo. Jones was disheartened that it took her passion and voice to get the ball rolling on the initiative.
It disappoints Jones to note the imbalance of work being put in throughout the planning of this month from non-Black faculty and students, she said.
“For this particular month, for these events, for these Black students, invest back into your Black students,” Jones said. “They invest in campus by paying all this money to come here and live here.”
Many of these equity issues unfortunately end up being brought up and dealt with by Black students and staff, even when it is to their detriment, Jordan said.
While students and staff are willing to recognize the progress that has been made, there is still more that needs to happen and more collaboration and nuance needed when approaching the topic, Smith said. The university needs to do a better job at interrogating its history when looking at implementing improvements as the two go hand in hand, she said.
“I do think one of the unspoken values of the university is family and tradition,” Smith said. “So, when you have family and tradition as a core value, but then family and tradition kind of contradicts the values of the newer generation, which is about inclusivity, it creates conflict.”
Published on February 23, 2023 at 12:33 am
