ACCESS
U
BLACK ON CAMPUS Senior Lecturer Gayle Golden reflects on the student experience.
FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS, THE BROVALD-SIM COMMUNITY
To view the students’ work, visit accessu. sjmc.umn.edu/ blackoncampus/ To support the Brovald-Sim Community Journalism class, visit z.umn.edu/ brovaldsim
14
Journalism class has covered a different campus community. Of all years, 2021 seemed like the right time for the class to focus the semester on Black communities on the Twin Cities campus. The nearly 20 students who gathered on Zoom in January were eager to do what other Brovald-Sim Community Journalism classes had done on campus for disability, addiction, rurality or nontraditional status: create a news site that identifies a “hidden” campus community and report deeply on it through sustained engagement, a large survey and stories that gave voice to its members. Black students at the University of Minnesota make up just 7 percent of the undergraduate population. They were underrepresented and undercovered. But anxiety loomed large. For one thing, the pandemic had dispersed campus communities. How would students connect meaningfully with Black students through Zoom, phone or 15 minutes of masked, distanced encounters? Other concerns ran deeper. Most of the non-BIPOC students in the class— most of the class—felt they had no right to report on Black student groups. They wondered if they could even ask the right questions. Or whether their mere presence would cause harm. The class’ diversity fellow, Marissa Evans of the Los Angeles Times, minced no words in response to that anxiety. “Only white journalists could have the privilege of saying they cannot cover a community,” she wrote in an email to the class, referring plainly to her experience as a Black journalist. “Journalists of color in general are sometimes subject to covering topics they feel uncomfortable or uneducated in, but the assignment and keeping employment often has to outweigh that discomfort...The mission and vision of this class is to push advanced students in the School to do journalism with impact that raises awareness, accountability and open-mindedness. Covering the Black student experience on campus and in the Twin Cities is an opportunity to fulfill that mission.” AccessU: Black on Campus is a testament to the students’ decision to face their fears and do that hard work. The students read articles from experts, discussed approaches, and listened to Black journalists about
MURPHY REPORTER ❙ Summer 2021
how to report with empathy. When they started the reporting work, they took care of each other at every turn. They created and stuck to a common mission that felt authentic: “To do reporting that centers the experiences, voices and stories of Black communities on the Twin Cities campus.” Editor-in-chief Jasmine Snow leaned into the hard work of contacting key Black student groups to tell them about the project. As a Black student, she plowed important ground for non-Black students in the class and helped create a manual to guide students through sensitive issues. The class was incredibly grateful for her efforts, which made everything possible. The AccessU model (supported by the Brovald-Sim Community Journalism Fund) builds on a principle that community journalism begins where people live and what they care about. Students start with simple news and views stories. They move on to profiles. Only later come issue stories, in this case drawn from a survey sent to undergraduates that showed the University’s attempts to address racial inequalities didn’t resonate with students. Another story analyzed, and interviewed people about, the numbers behind Black faculty and students (see p. 15). Early in the semester, students said they wanted to avoid writing just about Black trauma, which had resonated through the year’s protests of George Floyd’s murder and police brutality reflecting wider systemic racism. They wanted to reflect Black joy too, through depictions of students’ passions and pursuits: Black fashion designers, musicians, inspiring educators, aspiring actors and passionate leaders. The multimedia team created a Humans page featuring photographs with people expressing who they are in their own words. But Black trauma was never far. The Chauvin trial dominated the end of the term. Daunte Wright was fatally shot in Brooklyn Center, Minn. Only then did the full lessons of community coverage emerge. Relying on our list of survey respondents who agreed to be interviewed, we were able to report what Black students were thinking during the trial and after the verdict. The work was powerful and important. What began out of fear ended with a lesson in listening and reporting. No one had to parachute in when the story hit. They were already there with empathy. That’s community journalism.
