For those counting at home, it’s been 243 days since classes began last August. In the meantime, plenty of things have happened both here at Guilford College and beyond the bubble.
As we approach the end of the year, we at The Guilfordian want to highlight some of the accomplishments students have made during the last eight months to motivate us to look forward to what our community can achieve in the future.
At the end of the fall semester, student artists presented their work in Founders Hall for the public to see. This mirrors what we’ll witness in the next two weeks when student researchers will present their projects and theses at the Guilford Undergraduate Symposium to the College community.
Student activists challenged their peers, campus administrators and even national officeholders. Some, like those involved with the Spring Lobby Weekend, traveled to Washington, D.C. Others, involved with Integrity for Guilford and Black Lives Matter, sought change right here in Greensboro and on our campus. Students even organized our own Black Lives Matter Week and brought co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement Patrisse Cullors to campus.
The volunteers among us brought attention to issues like homelessness and food insecurity through Bonner Center programs like Church Under the Bridge and the Mobile Market.
The athletes among us achieved physical feats — the football team went 9-1, and the women’s basketball team reached the second round of the NCAA Division III Tournament.
Students engaged passionately in community forums, both at Community Senate meetings and in the Opinion section of our paper. We exchanged thoughts and concerns on topics like sexual assault, College divestment, white privilege and campus divides.
Clubs and organizations led by students took charge too.
Blacks Unifying Society held kickback events for community members to attend. Hispanos Unidos de Guilford worked to get more undocumented students on campus.
The Greenleaf Review won a best of show award from the North Carolina College Media Association. New clubs, from the club Quidditch team to the Students for Sensible Drug Policy, joined the community too.
There were group achievements, like the Theatre Studies Department’s three successful productions, and individual ones, like first-year Sel Mpang becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.
There were ways in which students got locally involved, such as collecting 5,086 cans of food for the Greensboro Urban Ministry at the Soup Bowl, and ways in which students engaged with the global community, such as welcoming refugees from abroad with Every Campus a Refuge.
This barely scratches the surface though. Students have done a lot in the last school year, more than we could ever hope to list.
For those of you coming back next August, we can’t wait to see what else you do. Your actions are what drive this institution and demonstrate its core values.
For those of you graduating on May 14, perhaps the ultimate student achievement, we wish you more successes down the road. Your accomplishments here are mere resume items compared to what lies next.
Guilford is a part of Colleges That Change Lives. Its students, in turn, are people that will change the world.
