GSU Collegiate 100 to host first State of Black GSU

  • Collegiate 100 will host their first annual State of Black GSU Jan. 17 Courtesy of GSU Collegiate 100

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Brendan Ward
January 17, 2018

GSU Collegiate 100 will host their first State of Black GSU panel on Wednesday, Jan. 17, in the Williams Center Multipurpose Room.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. The panel is open to students, faculty and alumni.

The panel is intended to be a solution-based discussion on the stance of black students at GS, said Jordan Hicks, the Collegiate 100 academic chair.

“In this time of history, minorities are marginalized,” Jordan Hicks said. “We feel as if the goals of higher education should be to connect students with real-world problems and get them engaged in solving these problems we encounter on a day-to-day basis. The first step to that is awareness.”

Graduate ambassador Christopher Pugh will moderate the panel, which will also feature various panelists answering student-submitted questions.

Participants are encouraged to tweet their questions using the #STATEOFBLACKGSU hashtag.

The panelists include:

  • Ivory Watts, GS alumna
  • Tynika Smallwood, sophomore at GS
  • Nathan Palmer, professor of sociology at GS
  • Patrice Jackson, dean of students at GS
  • Paris Lawrence, current Mr. GS
  • Daisja Dukes, counselor of education at GS

Watts said the event is not intended to attack the university.

“We aren’t seeking to attack the university,” Hicks said. “We just seek to alleviate confusion about why things are the way they are by bringing transparency.”

Collegiate 100 is also hosting a community cleanup in poor, predominantly minority communities in Statesboro on Sunday, Jan. 20, at 10 p.m. There is no pre-registration, but volunteers should meet in the Russell Union Theater.