Tennessee State University’s FUTURO chapter float during the university’s homecoming parade in October. (Photo credit: Daryl Stuart)
While looking back, the event also gave hints of TSU’s future. Amid the entourage of school bands from Nashville and across the region, as well as signs touting a new direction for TSU, the parade included a float featuring the institution’s first Hispanic student campus organization, FUTURO.
In just more than a year, FUTURO, which means “future” in Spanish, has helped the Tennessee State community become more comfortable with the university enhancing its appeal beyond Blacks, its historic target audience of students, based on years of legalized racial segregation and several decades of tradition.
“It’s nice to be able to show that we, too, have that sense of pride, celebrating that legacy and history,” says Dalila Duarte, 29, a third-year, TSU Ph.D. candidate from Chicago. “Now, it’s not why are we here, but how can we collaborate.”
Duarte, an American-born daughter of immigrants from Cuba and Mexico, says the atmosphere on campus toward Hispanics has gone from puzzled resentment over their presence to learning how much both cultures have in common. This year, the president of FUTURO is a young Black man from Tennessee, a Spanish major who speaks Spanish as well as many Hispanic students.
Diversifying demographics
While many institutions with histories of appealing to niche groups, based on law or tradition, have had open doors for decades, what’s happening recently at TSU and other historically Black colleges is new: they are now aggressively pursuing long-talked-about, yet cautiously embraced, affirmative action and diversity agendas as part of their survival strategy.
