“I, Too, Am USC” focuses on Black History Month

The “I, Too, Am USC” campaign, a USG and Diversity Affairs collaboration to promote greater inclusion of minority groups on campus, will honor Black History Month by spending February highlighting black students.

The campaign has spread to several social media outlets, such as Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, which showcase photographs of students denouncing the stereotyping of campus minorities.

The organizers of the campaign include Ama Amoafo-Yeboah, executive director of Program Board, and Skylar Dunn, co-director of Diversity Affairs. Amoafo-Yeboah and Dunn explained that the purpose of the campaign was to raise awareness on issues concerning diversity.

“It’s pretty much to stand up to the powers that be, for lack of better words,” Dunn said. “Not all black and brown faces that you see around campus play basketball or run track or do some sport, and we want to make that clear. I, Too, Am USC is to highlight all minorities, but this month we’re highlighting black students because it’s black history month.”

Dunn explained the history behind the hashtag, which has appeared at campuses across the country, such as Harvard, University of Michigan and New York University.

“It stemmed from a movement that started at other universities, such as the #ITooAmHarvard campaign,” Dunn said. “So there was a lot of noise going around the country for the past two years, and now ’SC is finally getting on board.”

Amoafo-Yeboah traced the origins of the campaign at USC to a project led by current USG Vice President and President-Elect Rini Sampath.

“The team worked very hard to get the first round of images, and then Skylar and I helped out with developing the social media aspect,” Amoafo-Yeboah said. “However, we didn’t think that the people were understanding the message of the campaign. People were saying all sorts of happy-go-lucky things, which is fine, but we were trying to highlight the voices that were silenced. People have all kinds of platforms for their happy experiences, but this wasn’t the platform for that.”

She further went on to explain that the campaign has shifted to a focus on expanding its social media presence.

“Another problem was that all the photos were being pushed at once, so now we decided to take a step back and post only one a day to get more attention and likes,” Amoafo-Yeboah said. “Now we have over 1,200 likes on our Facebook page and 900 followers on Instagram.”

Dunn explained how his personal story as a USC transfer student made him realize the importance of raising awareness through social media.

“I transferred from a historically black college and now, every time I’m walking around campus, I get asked what sport … I play,” Dunn said. “I don’t like being that stereotype and to avoid it, I wear a shirt and tie to class everyday. But it got to the point to where I thought this was crazy.”

After this initial success, Dunn and Amoafo-Yeboah have more plans for the future of the campaign and the Black House, a project to create a physical space for black students.

“Right now the campaign is all over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr,” Dunn said. “Saturday we’re doing a photo shoot of intentionally staged images with no white boards. And we’re also going to do a video shoot.”

Amoafo-Yeboah also said that they have planned to take further propositions on fundraising by meeting with administration and potential investors.

“We’ve identified prime real estate for the Black House, but we’ve decided to set a fundraising goal first and then we can be competitive in the market,” Amoafo-Yeboah said. “We just finished our draft of our executive summary and … By the time we finish, we should be able to meet with the administration and potential investors.”