Category Archives: Lifestyle & Community

by: Elizabeth Mensah

The University of Pennsylvania’s Black community welcomed its most recent additions at the annual BSL Meet the Freshmen event on Friday. The Black Students League’s first social event of the school year, this gathering creates a platform for the upperclassmen of the African Diaspora to reach out and offer everything from friendship to academic advice to their counterparts in the incoming class. In order to facilitate the formation of these bonds, the Black Students League also provides a mentoring program in which the newcomers are paired with the more experienced students, fostering closer relationships and adding a personal touch to the freshman acclimation process. For many, Friday’s affair was the beginning of that unique relationship, as several mentors and mentees met each other for the first time.
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By Adriane Mc Cray

“It’s hot… it’s small…it’s home.”

Gerald Andah, sophomore in the College, sticks to simplicity in describing Ghana. It was apparent that words could do his homeland justice.

For some students like Andah, home is simple to explain. In a discussion with your fellow Black classmates, some students defined home as a location—where their permanent addresses, beds, and mothers currently reside. A New York native complicated the conversation with specifics of a burrow, proximity to sub lines, and cross streets. A southern sister recalled the warmth of children playing, big yards, and a social neighborhood. Upon further questioning, home clearly was understood as a culture made up of their family, friends, and customs for these students.

Andah says it best, “It’s what we know.”

While some students have ease in identifying this place called home, other students grapple with defining a single entity. Claiming their African or Caribbean societies where their larger families have roots, first generation Americans have views of home separate from the neighborhoods surrounding their permanent U.S address.

“[Home] is a hairdresser in the kitchen, a view from the 18th floor…and [Jamaican] patois,” a Bronx native shares, while hinting at her Caribbean roots.

Many students admit that Penn is even considered home. A prideful Prince George’s county native expressed that home is something he struggles to define because he spends more time at Penn than in “PG” county. The amount of time spent over the course of four years almost requires us to acknowledge some type of connection to Penn beyond academics. So how does Penn fare as a home?

Although some consider Penn to be different from home in the sense of family and childhood familiarity, Penn is our hub during our prime years of intellectual growth. Penn houses an alternative sense of family with cultural communities and social groups on campus. For Black students in particular, our culture is strengthened by the support of our cultural center, Makuu, and the student groups under the UMOJA umbrella.

Class of 2012 Onyx Society Freshman Honor Roll Recipients

Our performing arts groups dedicate their time to share performances rooted with black culture, preserving their own place in history of black arts and our political and purpose groups work to protect our place in respective academic fields. Our sub-cultural groups nurture the diversity within our black student body and our historically black fraternities and sororities bring century-old traditions of service and high achievement of our forefathers to campus. Our publications and social fellowship groups make efforts to spread ideas for the betterment of the Black Penn students and the greater black community and our faith groups exchange positivity and hope to keep us grounded in our own beliefs.

Many Black students claim that the nurturing and close-knit aspect of the Black community on campus is reminiscent of our respective homes. Students attributed openness, social forwardness, and spirited support for successful classmates to be characteristics the Black community that make students feel more at home.

Interestingly, when asked if anyone was excluded from the Black Penn community, the consensus was that while the Black community is indeed comprised of Black students, it seemed to include “the wise,” or any student that was interested or found relevance in Black issues and people. One student suggested that the only ones that are excluded are those that exclude themselves. That is to say, the Black Penn community is welcoming and readily available for any student who chooses to use is resources.

To: The villages that raised the children

From: The Black Penn community that nurtures them today

“Your children are in good hands.”

By Joshua Bennett

For anyone who has seen me on Locust Walk over the past 3 years, one thing is clear: I am no stranger to the hypnosis of music. On most days, I can be found jostling with a distinct musicality in my stride, unfazed by the confused looks of passersby or subconscious worries about African American stereotypes. To say it plain, I dance to class because I feel like it, son. Now, while this may seem like an unnecessarily strong position to take concerning what appears on the surface to be a personal matter of sorts (one arguably undeserving of critical attention or even the continued energies of your reading eyes) I refuse to be vilified for my unwillingness to stop rocking the boogie. Yet, in a diplomatic effort to clarify my affinity for seemingly random moments of cutting the rug, as it were, I would like to offer up my personal battle with what will herein be referred to as HPDS (Hot Party Deprivation Syndrome) as a case study for a prevailing issue in the Black community at the University of Pennsylvania.

I first recognized symptoms of HPDS when I found myself spending most Saturday nights indoors with a box of graham crackers and the Garden State Soundtrack on repeat. Now, while there is clearly nothing inherently problematic about the above scenario, one must take into account several vital aspects of the situation to fully understand what’s wrong with this picture: 1.) It’s Saturday night, people. 2.) The Garden State Soundtrack has not a single head-knocking anthem that will cause di gyals to buss a dance, wine up di waist, etc. and 3.) I’m far too old to be eating graham crackers with no sort of culinary complement to bring out the full flavor of the crunchy, delicious treat. An air of undeniable whackness was pervasive this particular night, a troublesome cloud of boredom and quarter-life-crisis anxiety that I couldn’t quite shake. I wanted to party; I simply had no canvas upon which to imbue this dream with life, no dance floor to glide across like a spit-shined moon. As any logical hipster would do in this situation, I called my boys. To my chagrin, they had all (and by “all” I mean the three homies I don’t actually go to school with) apparently been about to call me to see what was “crackin’ at Penn,” a phrase that has become more and more paradoxical as this lackluster party year has dragged on. I announced, via both text and Twitter that I was going to sleep early that night; feigning the sort of responsible behavior I often hope I stumble onto one of these days before graduation.

For many of us, there are too many of these sorts of nights: evenings spent wandering between different frat parties from which many of us are either outright denied admission for being a tad too brown for the décor, or allowed inside only to leave minutes later thoroughly unsatisfied by fetishistic comments and poor musical selection. Point blank: there need to be more spaces for Black folks to comfortably party together. Until there are, you can find me most days on Locust Walk self-medicating through the beats emanating from my headphones. I’ll probably be dancing; trying hard as I can to remind my feet what they were made for.