February is Black History Month, and all month New Mexico State University’s Black Programs and the Black Student Association has been inviting the campus community to participate in a series of special events. Scott Brocato recently spoke with Grace Warren, Event Coordinator with the Black Student Association, about the events.
Scott Brocato:
Talk about what your duties are as event coordinator.
Grace Warren:
My duties were to just really brainstorm event ideas and then putting them together for the Black Student Association specifically. So I'm getting the vendors and stuff like that for foods and everything like that put together.
Scott Brocato:
And about how long does it take to put something like this together? When did this actually begin for this month?
Grace Warren:
For this month, we started towards the end of the semester last year.
Scott Brocato:
Talk about some of the processes, the motivations, the reasonings behind selecting various events; the criteria.
Grace Warren:
I think basically our criteria is just to have the student body engaged and educated and we just want to bring people together, basically.
Scott Brocato:
And how important is student involvement?
Grace Warren:
Really important. That's like our main goal, to get the student body involved. Our goal as a group is to get the black community involved, but further than that, we want our entire student body involved because our group is not just for African-Americans.
Scott Brocato:
How important is it still to observe Black History Month in general, and here at NMSU in particular?
Grace Warren:
It's really important because I think there are so many contributions that African-Americans have brought to society and NMSU in general, and I think it's important to highlight them and give space to represent those things.
Scott Brocato:
We're about halfway through the month of February now, and some events have already taken place. What have been some highlights so far for you?
Grace Warren:
I think for me, specifically, our luncheon that happened at the beginning of the month, the startup, is really important, because that is a way to get, like I said, involvement that is really important. That's a way to get not only just the African-American students, but literally the entire student body who goes in through in and out house to have some sort of representation, and see that this food is so important to our culture and everything like that. And then also we had a table where we had black student associations handing out flyers for all of our events and everything like that. So that was very important to help kick off the month and get involvement.
Scott Brocato:
What are some events coming up?
Grace Warren:
My highlights for the next events are “Stories in Color” that's coming up on the 18th. We're having a local artist come in, along with a student leader from NMSU, to help delegate, help us make murals, many murals with our own stories on them because murals are so pivotal to black history, and we are going to put them all together into a big mural to help show the black stories at NMSU.
On top of that, we have the "Let's Talk About It" for(the Black Student Association). And I think that's really important too because a lot of our events, like I said, it's for student involvement and engagement, education, whatever, whatever. But at the end of the day to bring community and give people a time to relax and the space to have a community, have fun. But it's also so very important for us to have that space where we can sit down and talk about important things that are affecting us and things that are happening in our day-to-day life that maybe we need to address or anything like that. It's definitely important for us to have that space. So that's what that "Let'sTalk About It" is about.
Scott Brocato:
For you personally, what do you feel are some important topics?
Grace Warren:
One thing that I think that is really important to talk about right now is just the state of the world and how as African-Americans we have been the people who, we have this Marsha & Mac event which is like, I don't know if you know about Marsha, I don't remember her last name—B Johnson or something like that? It's so important to highlight how African-Americans have helped push change and movement through activism everything like that in society. And so much is happening right now that yes, it might not be happening specifically to our people or majority to our people, but it's so important to talk about how it's affecting us and everything like that.
Scott Brocato:
Finally, at the end of the activities this month, what do you want people to take away from it?
Grace Warren:
I just want there to be a clear community for our people to be able to rely on, and a place for other people to be able to see that black history is still being made every day.
