The Current State of Black Student Unions

The Current State of Black Student Unions

Diverse surveyed the leaders of 23 BSUs across the country to see how the organizations have evolved over the years. All the BSUs surveyed were found to be mainly socio-cultural organizations. Close to 40 percent of them have few or no ties to the larger Black community, as a mere nine of the 23 leaders surveyed say a community service program is one of their major initiatives each year.

Some of the social events the BSU leaders say they host include banquets, BSU weeks, fashion shows, parties, step shows, alumni gatherings and beauty pageants. Cultural events include lectures, panels or forums with leading Black scholars, Black History month programming and Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations.

“Our main goal is to focus on the African diaspora and just to make Black people feel at home when they come to the campus,” says Aishah Bruno, who served as BSU treasurer for the past year at Brooklyn College, where she recently graduated. “We throw parties, we have social events and we go on education trips. We’re social, but we get political when necessary.”

Damita Davis, director of multicultural programs at Emmanuel College in Boston, says her BSU “is known for its educational as well as social events on campus.”

Today, BSUs compete with fraternities and sororities for membership. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, most of the Black students were involved in both BSUs and Greek organizations, but the situation is different today. Close to three-quarters (17 of 23) of the leaders surveyed say the majority of Black students on their respective campuses are not active members of BSUs.

The arrival of foreign-born Black students is also chipping away at the BSU membership. Students from Africa, the Caribbean and South America have formed their own African Student Unions and Caribbean Student Unions over the years. Today, 52 percent of the leaders surveyed reported there are separate organizations for these Black student groups.

In addition to their dwindling membership, BSUs are coming under attack along with many of the other race-specific organizations and programs in higher education.

“Black colleges themselves have come under attack,” says Dr. Joy Ann Williamson, a higher education historian at Stanford. “Anything that is racially specific or race conscious has come under attack, whether it’s affirmative action, Black colleges, Black studies, Black cultural centers and even Latino cultural centers.”

Dr. Nathan Hare, former chair of the Black studies department at San Francisco State University and current chairman of The Black Think Tank, says any attack on race-specific programs in higher education — or any other aspect of society — is ridiculous.

“It’s absurd to say that [student groups] shouldn’t be race-specific when everything else is,” he says. “It’s specific that Black people are flunking out of an educational system that is not working for them. It’s specific that Black people are herded into inner-city ghettos in the worst sections of town. It’s specific that Blacks are more likely to die. It’s specific that Blacks are filling the prisons through laws that Whites made with White judges, mostly White lawyers and White juries.”

But despite the challenges, many BSUs in recent years have either been founded, resurrected or returned to a more activist ideology. In 1997, students and faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater founded the National Black Student Union, which is set to host its ninth annual conference this year from Nov. 17-19 in Lake Geneva, Wis. Students representing 37 BSUs, mostly from the Midwest, attended last year’s conference. The conference and the NBSU serve as means for BSUs to exchange experiences and strategies, says Roger L. Pulliam, the NBSU’s senior adviser and the assistant vice chancellor for academic support services at the UW-Whitewater.

As recently as January, a BSU was established at the University of South Dakota. Also this year, Gwynedd-Mercy College in Pennsylvania restarted a BSU. In 2005, the University of Idaho resurrected its BSU and Cowley College founded one in 2004. The University of Vermont established one in 2003, the same year Lehigh University revived theirs.
Williamson isn’t surprised that students are still organizing.

“It’s the grievances that often bring about organizing,” she says. “So as long as Black students are alienated, disaffected, racism continues to exist and they continue to experience it in their classrooms, and with their peers and in a variety of other ways, then I would think that the need for Black student associations continues. I don’t think that students are using them to their fullest advantage. But I also don’t think they should be made obsolete.”

© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com