Last week was the Black Student Association’s Spirit Week. The week’s activities consisted of door decoration, HBCU shirts, black musician shirts, 90’s day, and “Sunday best”, along with a talent show. The events were meant to be a fun spin on the usual spirit week events, but be simple enough for everyone to participate in.

On Wednesday, we spoke to Lena Richardson, president of the BSA, to learn more about BSA and Black History Month.
On the topic of BSA’s future events, there will be a March Madness competition coming up as a fundraiser for the cookout near the end of the year. Teams of three will play against each other in a single-elimination basketball tournament for a prize.

With Black History Month ending, we wanted to talk about what schools can do to support and include black students more.
Lena believes that black history as it is currently being taught in schools needs to celebrate more of the many achievements by black leaders and cultures instead of only focusing on the suffering of black people throughout history. “In the millions of years of black history, slavery is a dot. It’s a very important dot, it should be spoken about, but it shouldn’t be the only thing that’s talked about.” She says actions such as including instruction on topics like ancient African civilizations in world history classes would “show people that this is just one part of the timeline versus a whole history of greatness.”

Returning to BSA’s activities, the talent show took place in the auditorium at lunch on Friday. Before the show, we spoke to Tamar, board member of the BSA and the first performer in the show. He says that he picked up writing during quarantine as a way to cope with his emotions and felt that this performance would be a positive way for him to express that. “This could be like my outlet.”
For his spoken word poetry performance, he read 3 amazing poems discussing topics including being Black in America. We asked him to describe his performance in 2 words, to which he said “intellectual” and a “conversation”.

The other performances included singing, gymnastics, and rap. The turnout was high, with an energetic crowd filling the auditorium.
The show ended with an “aux battle” between the two sides of the audience. Students saw which side could sing along and show the most energy after choosing iconic songs to fit categories such as “Songs that would Make your Parents Say ‘What Do You Know About This?’”

Overall, the talent show was an exciting end to a fun spirit week.