Spring Break
Student Involvement Dwindles After Loss of "Stoop"
Breanna Morrison
Issue date: 2/16/09 Section: News
The Black Student Assembly, Black Woman's Caucus, and the student chapter of the NAACP are organizations that once thrived at USC. Yet today, they have little to no membership.
They once served as the hubs for black student involvement at the university, but now they seem to exist only as nostalgic remnants of a once highly active black student community.
Syreeta Aboubaker, Assistant Director of the Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs and a USC alumnus, says that when she was an undergraduate, black student involvement in campus activities was much greater. She describes this involvement as not limited to within organizations, but that "there was a desire to just congregate and show the campus that we existed".
Black students during the 1990s were more visible not only to each other, but to other USC students, particularly through their daily presence at "The Stoop". The stoop, was an area of tables and steps located just outside of Commons Dining Hall, USC's main campus dining area.
There, black students met during the lunch hour to socialize. But since 2005, participation at the stoop began to dwindle and ironically, so did involvement in black student organizations.
The stoop served as a key place for organizations to publicize their events and this helped keep black students engaged in campus activities. However, when construction of the new Campus Center began last year, the stoop was jack-hammered into non-existence and it symbolically dismantled the already struggling unity within the black community.
Freshman Cameron Morrison, expressed his frustration saying, "Because there is no stoop, no central meeting place, it's harder for the people who don't already know [everyone] to meet new people".
While Morrison argues the growing disconnect within the black community may have resulted from the lack of a central meeting location, others believe that it is because incoming black students are simply less inclined to support "black-only" events.
They once served as the hubs for black student involvement at the university, but now they seem to exist only as nostalgic remnants of a once highly active black student community.
Syreeta Aboubaker, Assistant Director of the Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs and a USC alumnus, says that when she was an undergraduate, black student involvement in campus activities was much greater. She describes this involvement as not limited to within organizations, but that "there was a desire to just congregate and show the campus that we existed".
Black students during the 1990s were more visible not only to each other, but to other USC students, particularly through their daily presence at "The Stoop". The stoop, was an area of tables and steps located just outside of Commons Dining Hall, USC's main campus dining area.
There, black students met during the lunch hour to socialize. But since 2005, participation at the stoop began to dwindle and ironically, so did involvement in black student organizations.
The stoop served as a key place for organizations to publicize their events and this helped keep black students engaged in campus activities. However, when construction of the new Campus Center began last year, the stoop was jack-hammered into non-existence and it symbolically dismantled the already struggling unity within the black community.
Freshman Cameron Morrison, expressed his frustration saying, "Because there is no stoop, no central meeting place, it's harder for the people who don't already know [everyone] to meet new people".
While Morrison argues the growing disconnect within the black community may have resulted from the lack of a central meeting location, others believe that it is because incoming black students are simply less inclined to support "black-only" events.
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Los Angeles Movers
posted 5/21/09 @ 8:50 AM PST
It sounds like a variety of factors contributed to the decline of interest in the group but the lack of a central meeting place definitely seems like a big factor. (Continued…)
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