Black History Month Kickoff

Friday was the kickoff for black history month. Every year B.S.A., the Black Student Alliance, puts on a series of events for black history month. As their kickoff, they traditionally bring in the Crenshaw High School marching band. I remember last year, when I lived in Newcomb, I could hear the band during lunch from my room. On Friday I was eating lunch with a couple others and we went outside before the band arrived. The quad was full and when the band finally showed up, everyone cheered. It was a great show, though I was unable to stay and watch the whole thing.

Besides the marching band, the Black Student Alliance usually hold an interactive museum in the intercultural community center at some point during the month, have members perform at their Apollo Night and hold a dance in the quad called the “One Love Dance.” This month they’re also bringing in the Capoeira team we brought last year for Semana de la Raza.

To BSA, good luck with the rest of your Black History Month programming.

First MEChA/ALAS Meeting

This past Thursday was the first general meeting for MEChA/ALAS (Chicano – Chicana student movement of Aztlan / Association of Latin-American students.)

As one of the leaders of the group, I was really hoping we’d get a large turnout. We didn’t quite fill up Pauley’s Martin Luther King Lounge, which is where a lot of the cultural organizations hold events and meetings, but we did get a decent amount of people there. After our co-chair, Leo Magallon, led everyone in an icebreaker our advisor, Jesus Maldonado, spoke to the group about tutoring opportunities through Gear Up. There were some more announcements, of course, but the big part of the meeting was when we held nominations for the available External Affairs position on our executive board. Edith Zamora & Noel Hollowell accepted their nominations and we voted by secret ballot. I believe we will be announcing the winner at our next meeting.

I’d say we’re off to an okay start this semester and I hope there’ll be a good amount of participation from the underclassmen, especially since most of the leaders this year are seniors. We’ll see how things go at our event on Monday.