BSA hosts “Black Love Make and Take event”

The Black Student Association (BSA) hosted, the ‘Black Love Make and Take Event’ on Feb. 22. Students were invited to join and create art while discussing what black love means to them.

“I took the idea of the psychological aspect of ‘what does the word black mean,” said Tiara Hill, senior in psychology and BSA president. “It’s not just about skin color, rather, about how each person individually feels about love, and the way I came to that conclusion was thinking about colors and how, if everybody was a color, when we mix it together, the color would be black.”

While creating art, students discussed poetry, social media, and representation.

“We also talked about social media and the representations we see,” Hill said. “Not just positive representation, but accurate representation of all sorts and fashions of what love looks like. We talked about how there are these representations. Those roles that we see within the media, do they portray positive or negative actions to the community?”

This was the first time BSA has hosted this event.

“We’ve never done anything like this before. This February, since Valentine’s Day is still going on, we talked about relationships and what they should look like,” said Khadija Ceesay, junior in English and vice president of BSA. “(We talked about) aspects and how they differ from each other. This event was good for people to just relax and talk about what they think and have a safe space to say, ‘this is my relationship, this is how we function’ and have people respond.” 

Hill described the event as a safe space for people to talk and discuss topics.

“At first, it was really slow and quiet, but then once people started to speak up and they realized it was a safe zone to just talk, it really opened the door to have really good conversations,” said Hill.

The event was open to anyone who was interested in coming and talking.

“I think it worked pretty well. Our target audience with events that the Black Student Association puts on is first and foremost black students on campus,” said Ceesay. “But I think a lot of people, regardless of if they’re black or not, did have a lot of fun. Whether they could understand the material or not, they did enjoy the materials and information that they got from the event itself.”

Hill also wanted the event to show how love can be spread throughout the community as well.

“I think it went amazing,” Hill said. “We got to discuss symbolism within the community with their society. Like their macro aspects of love, the representation of it, how we contribute to those feelings, whether it’s good or bad. I think a lot of people really got to learn things and have open discussions.”

Anyone interested in joining BSA can find more information on Gorilla Engage or corresponding social media.