After the police shooting of George Floyd sparked anti-racist protests across the country, junior Danielle Geathers saw universities swiftly coming out with statements about what had happened. As the first Black female student body president at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), she felt pressure to quickly write a statement too, on behalf of MIT’s student government. But emotionally, she just wasn’t up for it.
A group chat of Black student body presidents — past and present — reassured Geathers she could take a moment to breathe.
“Having other Black student body presidents who were kind of in the exact same mindset as I was — and us being able to talk to each other and be like, ‘No, it’s OK. You can do it on your own time frame. Be graceful to yourself in this time. Don’t worry about external pressure. Do what’s good for you’ — [that] was very big for me,” she says.
This academic year, students at predominantly White institutions elected a wave of Black student body presidents, a cohort that now finds itself leading in unprecedented times, amid a pandemic and a national reckoning with racism. And they’re supporting each other through it.
“We definitely have built our own community,” Geathers says.
The cohort consists of Geathers, junior Noah Harris at Harvard University, senior Jason Carroll at Brown University and senior Naomi Riley at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), among others. Midshipman First Class Sydney Barber also became the first Black female brigade commander, the equivalent of a student body president at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Black student leaders have had to shift their goals to meet the global and national moment, while living through that moment themselves.
