By Aleah Green

As part of this year’s Student Activist Awareness Week, the University of Maryland chapter of the NAACP held a student activism town hall Nov. 1 to discuss the benefits of advocacy and the ways in which they can refine their presence on campus.

The evening featured four panelists representing NAACP, SGA, MaryPirg, Black Student Union (BSU) and Maryland MANE (Maintaining A Natural Essence) — all student groups at this university. Students were given the opportunity to speak on what it’s like to be both a student and an activist.

The panelists found that their reasons for advocacy stemmed from a passion for their community and a desire to create change.

Elonna Jones, a junior government and politics major and the activism chair for NAACP, said “being able to be in a close space with people who are like minded” is important to her as a student activist.  

But according to students like Misha Bucknor, who represented the Black Student Union and MANE at the town hall, it’s not always easy to stay motivated, especially when there are bumps along the way.

“As students, we have to find something that’s our consistent motivator,” said Bucknor, a junior kinesiology major.

Football player Jordan McNair died June 13 after suffering heat stroke at a team practice.

A rally was initially organized Nov. 1 due to outrage from the Board of Regents’ Oct. 30 decision to keep DJ Durkin as head coach of Maryland’s football team. Though he was fired the following day, students carried on with the rally in front of the Administration Building to show respect for McNair and voice various calls for action.

During the rally, students argued over whether boycotting or attending upcoming football games would bring justice for McNair.

SGA, MaryPirg, NAACP and BSU were among some of the organizations that led the rally. At the town hall, students representing these groups agreed that things could have been smoother.

Students including Jones noted that in order to bring about change, there must be an educational element in addition to just protests and rallies. Bucknor said she would’ve liked there to have been more discussion about the Jordan McNair Foundation, for example — which seeks to “promote awareness, educate, and advocate for parents and student athletes about heat related illness at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels,” according to its website.

While activists agreed that the rally brought more awareness to University of Maryland’s football program and the death of player Jordan McNair, they emphasized the importance of accountability and communication in working to make change.

 

Jasmine Braxton, a senior African American studies and criminology and criminal justice double major, attended both the rally and the town hall and noticed the divisiveness that occurred.

“One of the issues that I’ve seen with the student activist community here is that there’s a lot of passion, there’s a lot of people driven to do a lot of things, but there’s no direction,” said Braxton, who is co-president of Community Roots.