You can hear Hammidou Sylla’s voice boom over the chatter of a few dozen men, packed into the Dean Formal Lounge on a Sunday afternoon. The room goes from chaos, with frenzied members hurrying to pass balls across the room of all shapes and sizes to members before a new ball starts hurtling towards them, to an immediate silence broken only by the heavy breaths caused by the group’s opening activity.
The Men in Color meeting began with an activity that, on the surface, seemed nothing more than an athletic challenge testing the reaction time of those in the room. But in reality, it was a message on the importance of accountability and teamwork–values that MIC President, Francisco Rodriguez ’19, said he wants to continue integrating into the foundation of the group’s purpose.
“I want to have a group where we’re emphasizing certain core values,” Francisco said. “Mentorship, volunteering and community service, and brotherhood are just some of the others. We all needed guidance at one point in our lives, and as president I want to continue on the legacy of a group that does that.”
Men in Color is a group that started out small. It began as a call for action from two football players who saw the lack of communication from members across cultural divides in the SLU community as a major issue on campus. They used the term “MIC,” standing for “Men in Color”, in order to resemble the importance of a microphone amplifying the voices of the under-represented.
Today, that mission statement has grown to a group with almost 90 members, the majority of which do work to continue the group’s day-to-day operations like community outreach events to help local farmers at their farms or inter-club communications in order to hold mixers and build further connections into the SLU community.
As Hammi Sylla put it, these events are crucial to the empowerment of his fellow MIC brothers. “It gives a safe space to males from all marginalized groups to simply be themselves,” he said. “There’s this negative image attached to men of color in society that needs to be addressed, and having a group of us doing positive things helps do that. Mainstream media portrays us as something we are not, and it’s groups like MIC that fight that.”
In the end, Men in Color’s mission statement calls for members who recognize the difference in the experiences and perspectives of different members on campus. It allows for a space for men of color to vocalize and tackle the issues that plague them both on SLU’s campus, and around the globe. Vice President, Joshua Morrison, said “You always hear people classify SLU as predominantly white, and it becomes tiring to hear that without asking yourself: what can I do to fix this? How can I find a way to fit-in to this new world we’re all a part of?” It becomes clear that groups like MIC are an important answer to those questions.
Men in Color meets every Sunday at 4 p.m. in the Dean Formal Lounge.