This club strives to bring the De Anza community closer together, uniting all students who wish to learn more, or want to be part of, the African American, East Indies and Caribbean culture. De Anza’s Student Trustee and BSU member Thomasina Russaw says, “BSU supports a more multicultural togetherness –when you say Black Student Union, it’s more acceptable on De Anza’s campus, where you have Africans, Ethiopians and blacks that come from a Hispanic or Latino background, like Cubans or Puerto Ricans. A lot of times you have people who have grown up in an African American home, or community, and they feel more comfortable in that group even though they’re from other ethnic backgrounds. You have to create an atmosphere that’s comfortable for all ethnicities.”

The students come together each year, forming workshops, organizing events and opening their group to the community in an effort to support a multicultural atmosphere. But the key to BSUs success is that it is not an exclusive club.

BSU hosts many events to support this goal, the most popular one being the Spoken Word, a major yearly event constructed to bring different groups together under with assortment of performances, including spoken word. This year, the BSU also helped De Anza succeed in throwing its first Memorial Day Picnic.

BSU celebrates and hosts events during Black History Month and Women’s History Month and also support environmental social justice. The BSUs interest in environmental social justice brought Brian Terry – assistant to President Barack Obama and environmentalist Anthony Van Jones – to De Anza recently for a guest appearance, where he gave a speech about urban companies and the lack of resources to access in urban communities.

As for what’s to come, Russaw says that in addition to adding events, “we do have plans to collaborate with other clubs on campus. This year we did collaborate with the student engagement office and De Anza Student Body. I know we held a lot of cultural holidays, so what we want to do is start collaborating on those days. Everybody wants to start celebrating everybody – the more separate you are, the more you keep promoting that separation.”

Though the club isn’t active during the summer quarter, Russaw states that the BSU will be “getting things reorganized – looking at what has worked and what hasn’t – getting geared, and hoping to improve for the upcoming year.”