Campus groups work to celebrate black history

Despite a last-minute scheduling and funding scramble, Pitt’s student groups are now one step… Despite a last-minute scheduling and funding scramble, Pitt’s student groups are now one step closer to concluding their activities to honor Black History Month. Along with several other Pitt groups, Black Action Society hopes to use the month to educate other students about black culture.

This has not been an easy process for the student organizations. The BAS Fashion Show, a fundraiser featuring professional models and designers, received funding on Tuesday from the Student Government Board. BAS has been unable to promote the annual fashion show because of a funding delay. Fliers for the event should soon start to appear around campus, several weeks later than usual.

BAS requested a budget modification after Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum double-booked BAS’s fashion show on Feb. 25 with a Carnegie Mellon University event. SGB President Molly Stieber said BAS had to scramble to find a new venue after receiving the bad news from Soldiers and Sailors.

Stieber said SGB had hoped that BAS could find an on-campus location for the show, knowing how popular it is among the student body. The Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown hotel was the only suitable location available on such short notice.

BAS then had to modify its budget in order to pay for the Wyndham reservation.

“We see groups like BAS as capable of having an off-campus event and still receiving a massive turnout,” Stieber said. “They bring a lot to this campus, and they’ve been around since the ’60s. Plenty of people will go. I know I’ll be there.”

Stieber and the Board approved the budget modification at Tuesday’s public Board meeting in Nordy’s Place, which will allow BAS to start promoting the Downtown event.

Sophomore Halim Genus, the group’s executive assistant, said BAS did not receive the funding for the Black Active Student Intercollegiate Struggle Symposium this year, an annual conference held at Pitt to discuss issues in the black community. This year’s theme was set to be “Meeting of the Minds,” but last year’s Board decided not to fund the event.

BAS members didn’t express too much concern about the minds not meeting.

“We celebrate black history, black awareness and the black community all throughout the year,” Genus said. “We are not at all embittered that we can’t have one event.”

Genus said generating publicity has not been a problem for his group, which continues to see good turnout at events. BAS uses Facebook and tabling in Towers to promote its smaller events, such this Friday’s Black Consciousness Bowl and Karaoke Night in Nordy’s Place.

For BAS, February holds just as much weight as the other eleven months.

“The month does not bear extra importance for African-Americans,” Genus said. “Black History Month was created to perpetuate and propagate awareness for people on the outside of black culture and explain what it means to be black and the impact of black history.”

BAS is not the only group on campus observing the holiday month. Aronda Starks, president of Pitt’s Caribbean and Latin American Student Association, said that many students — both black and white — have attended cultural events so far this year. She hopes to keep that pattern up throughout February at events like the Bob Marley tribute scheduled for Monday night.

Starks said the Student Association’s February schedule is the fullest its been in years. But talk of the larger, annual Black History Month events doesn’t seem to be circulating around campus yet, likely because of the funding delay.

Chanell Turlington, vice president of Pitt’s National Pan-Hellenic Council, said that the University’s historically black and multicultural fraternities and sororities have been hosting their own individual events, such as Sigma Gamma Rho’s Black History Family Feud. But NPHC’s large, collaborative event is the Step Show, in which each historically black fraternity and sorority square off in an intense dance competition.

“Stepping is an important extracurricular activity to the historically black fraternities and sororities,” Turlington said. “It is also a great asset of black culture, especially during Black History Month.”

The NPHC Step Show will be held on on Feb. 26 at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum.