BASE (Black Awareness and Social Engagement) is a club about improving opportunities for black students and helping the community. BASE started Dec. 12 and is having monthly meetings in room 186.
MaShanta Ashmon who is helping lead BASE said that the club is important to start again so that we can get students involved with understanding black education and awareness.
“BASE was a club that Mr. Pascoe, who is now at North, ran at South for several years,” Ashmon said. ”What we want the club to do is get all students involved in understanding black education and awareness. We have a very small population of African American students here and maybe some of the things that issues that they might deal with might be a little different.”
According to the lead club sponsor Kevin Minor, BASE is about helping others and can help students get service hours.
“BASE is a chance for students to have leadership and mentoring opportunities,” Minor said. ”We want to specifically offer these opportunities to our African American students, but the club is not limited to African Americans, anyone can join.”
In addition to leadership and mentoring, according to Minor, BASE also wants to help kids and others within the community.
“We want to meet with our students to figure out a framework for things in our community we should do,” Minor said. “Things like tutoring students at the middle school, doing awareness programs and doing something for Black History Month, but we want our students in our club to figure out what the specifics of what those things will look like.”
Minor said that he wants to make the club independent and wants kids who join this club to be very actively engaged.
“In my dream scenario, the kids run wild with ideas that they want to do so much,” Minor said. ”Because if students can find a community idea that really gets them excited that is where we are gonna get the most engagement from them.”
Ashmon said that she also wants this club to bring awareness to lesser-known black figures in history.
“We hear about the big names like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman,” Ashmon said. “We don’t realize that we have like heroes among us who are not as well known, but also had an impact on our community.”
Ashmon also said that the club should honor people who are the first to do something in their generation.
“I hope students are interested in learning more about different graduates that we’ve had from the south,” Ashmon said. “It’s really important that we honor those that are the first generation of something whether it be, first generation of Grosse Pointers, first generation at South, first generation physicians, first generation engineers you know, just people who are kind of pioneers for our society as a whole.”