The Black Student Movement has elected a new president and vice president who are ready to implement fresh ideas and events to keep BSM going strong.
Alex Robinson and Qieara Lesesne, both rising seniors, have been elected to lead BSM as the new vice president and president. This year BSM celebrated their 50-year anniversary with many special events, and the new executive team plans to implement many successful events next year as well.
“At the end of the day the mission of BSM is to advance and meet the needs of Black students,” said incoming Vice President Alex Robinson. “That looks like a lot of different things, we have about 10 subcommittees, and we have five sub-performance groups, and we do a lot of outreach with other organizations. We participate in marches, we sponsored over 20 events during Black History Month in relation to Black history – we just do a lot.”
While a large part of BSM is putting on events for the community, the movement and members of the executive team place a large amount of importance on building relationships with all of its members.
“The primary reason I ran for vice president is because this year, the vice president is going to be working to establish the first-year class council and guide them through it,” Robinson said. “And I know as a student, and especially as a Black student, your first year is extremely integral to your college career. Where you have a start has an affect on where you go. And if we are able to come in early on and show these students that they have a support system within BSM early on when everything is OK, they will know when things get hard, they still have a support system within BSM.”
And while the leadership of BSM may be changing, the mission of the movement will stay the same.
“Carolina is a very large campus,” said Lesesne. “And being a minority on such a large campus means that you're gonna need a place of unification. Because there is such a small amount of us, it means that even though we do come together under this commonality of Black culture, it doesn’t mean that we are all the same type of Black. So with that being said, BSM is important because it serves as one touchpoint, one basepoint, one organization, one name that is tied to all things Black. And I think that one point of solitude or solace is important in an environment where you can be swallowed by being the other.”
The new leaders are excited for future change and improvement in the year to come.
“I am excited to see BSM to continue to improve,” said Robinson. “BSM 50 was such an important year. We did a lot of things, we had a great time and I really think we brought BSM back. And I’m just excited to continue to contribute to that growth.”
