By: Ramiyah Lee (Senn Sophomore); Video By: Colin Clark and Jacob Sager (Senn Seniors)
On February 23, 2022, Senn’s Black Student Union (BSU) club held an assembly in honor of Black History Month and the black student body. The assembly featured performances of many different art forms such as choreography, poetry and vocal performances.
Senn English teacher and BSU moderator Elisa Williams said, “Planning for the assembly is my favorite because it’s so chaotic, [but] at the same time it’s very, very organized. We just ask students to decide what they want it to do. And we were able to facilitate and sort of pull everything together.”
Williams is the BSU Sponsor. Meetings are held once a week on Wednesdays.
“It was a little hectic cause you know, the pandemic has made it hard to meet, but it was great in the end and students were able to show their true talents,” said Williams.
Sydney Mathis, 11th grade BSU president shared the same stance.
“It honestly, it was a little hectic, but we kind of came together towards the end…but I’m glad that we were able to show this amazing showcase,” she said.
There were 25-30 people a part of making this assembly come to life and the performers specifically had different experiences based on the type of performance.
“I feel like there’s definitely room for improvement, but I feel like overall it was a good experience and I did good,” said Lee Campbell, 11th grade BSU member. He crafted a poem highlighting black love and pain.
“Doing the actual poem, I feel, always comes easy for me because it’s like writing poetry is like a second language for me. I’m not so good with public speaking. And so that’s like the barrier I kind of had with today. So I feel like overall I did well, but there’s definitely room for improvement in the speaking area and giving more emotion,” he said.
“I never had to have a chance to do a solo personal type of thing for black history month. So to me, this is like some ‘bad B’ stuff right here, and it felt amazing that I was even to do something like this,” said Chimin Sterling, 10th grade BSU member who created a vocal and dance performance.
Sterling’s dance was the final act of the assembly. She performed to the song “Stand Up” by Cythia Erivo, a song in the soundtrack of the 2019 film “Harriet.” Just before the one minute mark, the song stopped but that didn’t stop the audience. They sang the rest of the lyrics despite the technical difficulties. The audience then demanded a redo and Sterling was able to re-perform her choreography from start to finish with no difficulties. This resulted in a standing ovation from the audience and showed a great example of community from Senn High School.
