Black Love Week, hosted by the Legion of Black Collegians, closed Friday evening with a dinner appreciating minority faculty. Saturday’s originally planned balloon release was cancelled due to weather concerns.
Black Love week is an annual event hosted by LBC with the purpose of bringing the black community together, LBC Communications Director Ashley Edwards said.
“During Black Love week, we have different events for students,” she said. “This year we had our executive board round table discussion on Monday, and on Tuesday we had a program titled ‘Living in a Black Economy’ that focused on how the economy is effecting the African-American community.”
Activities Chairwoman Kristen Andrews said the round table discussion LBC hosted for all of its umbrella organizations was one of the week’s most important events.
“It was really important to me to make sure that going into next year we established great relationships, and we knew exactly what our umbrella orgs were wanted from LBC,” she said in an email.
LBC also hosted a diversity conference dinner co-programmed with the Black Business Students Association on Wednesday and a love and relationships speaker event Thursday, Edwards said.
“The diversity conference was an evening of workshops for students who wanted to get into the business career avenue,” LBC President Lisa White said.
Thursday, speaker Tony Gaskin spoke about love and relationships in an event called “Real love is the new black,” Edwards said.
During the minority faculty and staff appreciation dinner, students representing the organizations or professions benefiting from the honoree’s service presented awards to their select faculty or staff member, White said.
“For the dinner, we invited minority faculty and staff and provided dinner, of course,” Andrews said, in an email. “We had different students then come and present the award for each faculty and staff member.”
Edwards said although the dinner was one of the most attended events, it was interrupted by the tornado warnings.
“On Friday, the dinner was right when all of the tornado alarms went off,” she said. “We actually had to stop in the middle of the program and go to the basement of Memorial Union, but we did get back up.”
Andrews said even with the tornado warning, the event went really well.
The balloon release LBC had co-programmed with the Missouri Students Association to close the week Saturday afternoon was canceled due to poor weather but will be rescheduled before the end of the year, Edwards said.
At the release, students were going to be able to write on a balloon what they wanted to “rise above.” The event was branded as part of One Mizzou programming, according to the event’s Facebook page.
“It will be rescheduled, but I’m sad we had to cancel it due to weather,” she said. “We have to talk to MSA because we are partnering with them, so we have to find a day that works for everyone. But the balloon release will happen.”
