Leadership Like You’ve Never Seen It Before!

"We will strive to uplift and cultivate leadership potential that lies deep in the minds and hearts of our youth," writes President Farajii Muhammad in his opening letter. "We know that sacrifice and commitment to cultivating the spiritual consciousness and leadership potential of our youth is great, but when we do, our future will be great. The NLLC Youth & College Leadership Summit 2000 is the first step." Farajii Muhammad and Tamara Hunter, both younger than most of the students reading this, are responsible for this Leadership Summit. This is their second conference and it gets better each year. We had the opportunity of sending four B.S.A. officers, Danielle Brinson, Alicia Ogletree, Venita Swain, and Starr Pryor. All of them enjoyed the conference. B.S.A. looks forward to sending even more next year.

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings opened up the summit with a memorable speech. "Why can’t we stay focused?" he implored of the attentive audience. By the time Congressman Cummings dished out a sermon on discerning between what is right and wrong, acting on what is right, and telling others about your experiences, no one was left sitting. He chastised leaders for ignoring integrity, called silence the worst conspiracy, and after a moving story about his daughter and father, said in reference to a conversation held between the two, "I see my future and it is bright!"

The last day of this conference hosted a panel discussion with our own Venita Swain as one of the panelist. One attendee remarked later, "You were sounding all professional on the panel" half jokingly. She represented us well. One of the discussions that caused the greatest debate was that concerning the gap between past leaders, such as Elijah Cummings and rising leaders such as Farajii. Most agreed there is a gap and that something has to be done about it.

Even here at Wesleyan, students often feel there is a disturbing communication gap between the student body and those administering it. In the words of Congressman Cummings, "Silence is a conspiracy." It is usually the lesser viewed body whose opinions go unnoticed. Is your voice being heard?

By Starr Pryor

Words from the B.S.A. Prez

"I Read a Poem once. . .

and no one listened"

For a speech of self-introduction in my public speaking course this semester, I closed with a poem that I wrote this summer entitled "America’s Young Black Jane." My inspirations for this poem were Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Childress (My Beth) and Gabriel, from a biology course I took this summer. Some members of the class obviously closed their ears, one even rolled her eyes (yes, I did see you), but I would just like to announce that very same poem won second place at the Hip Hop & Poetry Talent Showcase held at the conference sponsored by World Network. My portfolio will appear on their website where people from all over the world can listen to my voice reciting this poem and hopefully, not closing their ears to it. And while I’m at it, first place was awarded to a very talented musician, Jali-D for various tracks from his CD, Rappercussions. If you want to listen to him, come by Persons 309. B.S.A. and Kuji are also working on bringing him to our area. In this artist’s own words, "This project is a combination of two disciplines, which I currently am a student of: percussion--more specifically the djembe and its accompanying ensemble (doundoun, sangban, kenkeni) and spoken word rhyming poetry, aka rap." This young man is truly off all chains.

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