On Oct. 23 several hundred black undergraduate alumni gathered on Georgetown’s campus to take part in the first biennial Black Alumni Summit. The three-day event, the theme of which is “Re-engage – Reconnect – Recommit”, will feature panels ranging in topics from sports to leadership to the black experience on the Hilltop. Speakers and panelists are to include alumni working in government, consulting, and teaching as well as three current undergraduate student panelists. President DeGioia is also to speak at the event.
While the focus of the summit is to connect alumni from across graduating classes, there will also be opportunities for current undergraduates to attend and take part. “The hope is that this summit will … encourage greater interaction between alums and current students, especially through the networking event,” said Oyetola Oyeyemi (SFS’16), a current undergraduate panelist.
According to Thompson, the event will be a way for alums who have yet to return to Georgetown to reconnect to their alma mater. “This is a very, very exciting time and this is something that this affinity group of alumni feel is long overdue. We are just looking forward to being back on campus. There will be people in our event that have never been back to campus,” Tammee Thompson, a co-chair of the Summit, said.
Two years ago, a group of alumni together with the Office of Advancement began the planning to create this summit. “It’s been a full two-year process,” Thompson said. “About a year ago we put a planning committee in place, we put an outreach committee in place, and we went about recruiting folks to be on panels … About nine months into it we went live. “
While this summit is the first of it’s kind of Georgetown’s campus, as noted by Thompson, other universities have had similar events in the past. For example, colleges such as Virginia Tech and Wofford College have previously hosted Black Alumni Summits. These gatherings have similarly focused on issues of minority experience on their campuses as well as connecting alumni to each other and their alma mater.
This year has also seen other firsts in terms of black engagement on campus. This past October the Black Leadership Forum hosted Hoya Blaxa Homecoming, Georgetown’s first ever collection of events tailored towards Black students on campus as well as alumni.
Similar to events such as these, some see the Black Alumni Summit as yet another sign of greater engagement of the black community on campus. “It shows that the black community at Georgetown is not only growing, but making clear efforts to come together,” Oyeyemi said.
When asked if the event would always be held on Georgetown’s campus, Thompson said that remains to be decided by a future committee. “For me personally there’s just something special about coming home to Georgetown.”
The event began at noon on Friday and is to close with a ceremony on Sunday. In addition to connecting alumni who graduated decades in the past, the touchstone event offers recent graduates and soon-to-be graduates a chance to stay connected right after graduating. On the event’s purpose, Thompson said “it also lets alumna of color understand that when they leave Georgetown we have a lot of great touchpoints with the University and this is another touch point that you can have with an affinity community after you graduate.”
