By Ashley Morgan
Students and faculty alike gathered to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy at the MLK Student Leadership Symposium. The event featured an opening group session focused on building community, followed by multiple breakout sessions that students could pick from. The event closed with dinner and students showcasing art they produced.
This year’s symposium was different from the conference that had been held in previous years. According to second-year master’s student studying student affairs and administration and graduate event organizer Jakaira Lynn, events like this should always be changing, just as the fight for civil rights always grows and expands.
“We have students presenting art pieces they have created, poems they have created, one student is doing a short presentation on an experience that she had,” Lynn said. The first breakout session was in discussion format with all attendees, and used prompts relating to dance and poetry to help build community among attendees. Attendees also wrote love letters to themselves.
“The biggest characteristic of building a community […] supporting one another however that may look like, meeting somebody where they are, bringing your specialties to them and helping them show their own specialties that they may not even recognize, (and) just showing that we all can work well as one and that a community is always needed,” Lynn said.
Students then broke off into breakout sessions in various rooms. One session focused on self-care as a student of color at a predominantly white institution, or a PWI. Another, called
“Navigating Life at a PWI,” focused on dealing with racism and other issues in a school setting.
Fourth-year human biology student Isabella Garcia found that breakout session most engaging, and said she had experienced many of the struggles related to being a student of color in this environment.
“I didn't think it would be as captivating as it was […] I was just making eye contact with the woman the entire time,” Garcia said. “I didn’t want to get on my phone, I was just so captivated.”
The third session was called “Checking In On You” and allowed attendees to examine how they were really feeling.
“Sometimes with being the minority we do not have the option to check on ourselves, to have the proper support for ourselves, as we always are encouraged to just ‘be strong, you’ve got this.’ We are never allowed to let our wings down,” Lynn said. “So just allowing people to hold that space to just take a moment and breathe.”
After the breakout sessions, students socialized over dinner before watching their fellow peers present poetry, paintings and a personal presentation. Garcia presented a painting herself.
Community was the throughline of the entire event. Potential first-year pre-med student Kudus Oshinusi said he met enough people at the event and gained enough perspective to confirm his major.
“I think [the event] benefits people in a lot of different ways,” Oshinusi said. “For me it was meeting new people and being a minority on this campus. It is a predominantly white institution, and when you get to reach out and meet other [minority students], you know, Black people or African people, it makes you feel more comfortable being here and that was really nice for me.”
The event marked the legacy of MLK Jr. and brought students and faculty alike together in a new way. The event was celebratory while having programming that supported and bettered its attendees.
