News & Events

Howard University

Description: Howard University -- We have all heard of the recent bomb threats against historically black universities, Howard University in particular. This request sounded perfect. In addition, personally, I grew up right down the street from this location. Howard might have been there, but I took the street car / trolley, got off at the Wonder Bread bakery, which was across the street from our D.C. baseball field. I think I am now standing in what used to be left field. This call-out is really not a crisis situation. It is one student, running for their student “council”, using us to demonstrate "mental health", as her campaign message. We are at a table, among other candidates’ tables. Loud music across from us, minimizing the ability to talk to anyone. "Too loud for the dogs" didn't work. I hesitated saying too loud for the handlers. This “carnival” situation, did draw a good number of students. As our new team noted, a lot of students had their day made better by our being there. As our veteran team said, this was far from a crisis support situation. While we did pick this date ourselves, and we have no idea what might have been the situation on any other day, it felt that rather than having students come out to talk about their concerns about threats, that we were being used as one student’s campaign for student body election. I tried to spread the word that we would appreciate the opportunity to return in support of student concerns of the current events.