“What really inspired me to start the Black Student Union was just having a place for students to come together and either educate themselves or learn about our experiences and just experience them together. Being in a school that doesn’t really have that many Black students, it’s hard being the one of the few black people in class and seeing how everyone else kind of has people and you don’t. So I just wanted to have kind of a safe haven so everybody can just feel connected. […] What I hope to accomplish are more people showing up to the meetings, which for any club, I know is hard to accomplish. If I can’t have many people actually come to the meetings I would just like to have people understand what we go through. I think a lot of people don’t understand that being one of the two, three, four, five or six Black students [in class] is really really hard going through life not seeing people that look like you. I would like people to learn that being racist isn’t okay and I think a lot of it is stereotyping us which is also not ok. Even though [students] dont have alot of experience with Black students it’s still just hard walking through campus knowing people are either staring at you just because you may look different, or maybe they don’t know what it’s like to be like you. Especially people asking you questions like youre Google but a lot of people just don’t know and we have to educate them because it really is hard going through life knowing that only few people know that’s like.”

 “Usually in [Black Student Union] meetings we talk about our experiences in life, school, and times we’ve faced discrimination. But it’s not always negative things like that, sometimes it’s just shared experiences that we’ve had, positive and negative. We also plan events, for Black history month we did a spoken word and we also have another one coming up this friday. [Sierra]  inspired me to join because she wanted to create an environment that Black students around the school would feel safe [and] feel welcomed in […] and to feel like there was a place they could go if they needed it. So after that I joined the moment I found out about it and I’ve just been a part of it ever since.”