The Black Student Storytelling Project

The Power of Narrative Storytelling
By: Alan Halaly
Posted: Sept. 28, 2021

Being involved in the Black Storytelling Project has only reaffirmed to me the immense power of narrative storytelling. As a student journalist, I have learned time and again that a source’s story can shift opinions and change points of view, act as a historical record, and, often, create tangible change within dominant, corrupt systems. I eagerly latched onto this project because I knew it aligned with everything my career path as a news reporter represents to me: using storytelling and narrative to expose unseen inequities and foster societal growth.

I went to a high school whose student body was almost 50% Black. During my senior year, when I told a classmate where I was going to college, her response, albeit simple, was, honestly, surprising to me: “Why?” she told me. “Why would you ever choose to go there?” Although her response was puzzling to me at the time, through listening to the narratives of Black women from this project who struggle for a variety of reasons at our predominantly white institution, I have come to understand where my classmate was coming from and why she chose to attend a Historically Black College/University (HBCU).

“I could have blindly ignored the disparities and experiences between myself and my Black classmates to make myself feel like I wasn’t contributing to them. Thankfully, I didn’t.”

As a White person, collecting narratives from my Black peers was uncomfortable. Period. The peer research team was tasked with going around campus to recruit people to tell their stories with the promise of a changing culture around anti-racism work on campus. Over the course of the semester, we collected dozens of student stories ranging from new freshmen on campus to African international students. Speaking with people who have been ignored was familiar to me. I covered East Gainesville — the side of Gainesville which houses the often neglected Black neighborhoods in our college town — for UF’s student-run newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator. The beat required me to speak with people who have been wronged and forgotten by UF, the city, and society as a whole. I have long been keen on the fact that nobody owes you their trauma or their story for a project you’re working on. However, this time what I was asking of my peers felt much more direct and personal. I found myself continually asking myself a barrage of questions: How do I make it seem like I actually care? Am I making this person feel like a test subject?

What I have come to understand, however, is that such discomfort is warranted and necessary. I could have blindly ignored the disparities and experiences between myself and my Black classmates to make myself feel like I wasn’t contributing to them. Thankfully, I didn’t. But I don’t deserve an award, either — it’s up to White people in positions of privilege to go the extra mile to have conversations that make us awkward or uneasy.

I encourage everyone — regardless of where you come from, if you’re a new or returning UF student, no matter your personal experience or background — to take the time to listen to the audio of students who poured their hearts out with only one objective in mind: change. If we don’t put importance behind stories of anti-Black racism and representation, it only makes the goal of greater racial equity that much more difficult to strive toward. If there’s one takeaway from this project it’s that UF has a long way to go. But it starts with us — all of us.

Alan Halaly is a sophomore Journalism major from Coconut Creek, Florida. He was a member of our spring 2021 peer research team and collaborated with professors, graduate students, and other undergraduate students on drafting and submitting the academic manuscript for the project Summer 2021.

Peer Research Team Student Reflections
By: Alazne Cameron
Posted: July 26, 2021

When applying to become a member of the student Peer Research Team (PRT) for this project, I recall feeling a level of commitment to the work that I can’t imagine is common. Especially given the general mindset of “I’ll take anything” in the pandemic-induced employment drought. I felt that if I couldn’t participate as a peer researcher, I’d enroll as a participant. If I was disqualified from participation, I would promote the work on any platform I could register for. If promotion wasn’t allowed over social media, I’d spread the word by mouth. And to be honest, in the event my words fell on deaf ears, I’d wish the researchers, participants and promoters the best in their endeavors with little scorn; I was just happy that such an important project existed. In fact, I didn’t grasp the depth of that importance until weeks later, when my application was successful and I sat in my first project meeting.

The team of students gathered was exceptional by no stretch of the imagination and the administrators, faculty and graduate students leading us managed to be even more so. I was struck by the great care they had for the students involved on the project team and participants.

“Oral history and the passing of knowledge by word of mouth is a traditional practice for many Black cultures, which makes our project even more special.”

Our project merges several multi-modal elements to create work that dips its toes into both the academic and creative space. I find myself most changed by the creative educational programming pieces we put together for the project. In working as the production lead for the Black Student Storytelling Project, I had the chance to deeply reflect on the connections between Black student experiences and the current state of the world. Creating those media pieces felt like an exercise in uplifting Black student experiences through storytelling. Oral history and the passing of knowledge by word of mouth is a traditional practice for many Black cultures, which makes our project even more special. I’m hopeful that this work serves as a powerful tribute to men and women from marginalized communities who haven’t always had the space to share their experiences in academia through research or creatively.

The biggest takeaway I have from working as a PRT member and summer production lead is the importance of managing all the project’s many moving parts: recruiting students, collecting student stories, learning about qualitative research, qualitatively analyzing student stories, editing recorded clips to create audio packages, and preparing all our project audio to be archived. Throughout the entire experience, our team leaders kept us focused and encouraged us in our individual roles as peer researchers. Their guidance made the experience of documenting Black student life so enriching. I now understand the value of detailed and deliberate note taking. Through them, I have also come to know the value of careful planning, the importance of delegation and how to step back and look at the bigger picture rather than getting stuck on details that can hinder overall progress. Most importantly, I have learned that a strong team is much more valuable than an individual perfectionist. This project is a true testament to the benefit of collaboration in action.

When I started working with the team, I felt the world had only truly been listening to Black voices for about six months, in the wake of Summer of 2020, the murder of George Floyd, and other highlighted racial injustices. Although I was excited about this project in particular, in the beginning it was easy to imagine that UF’s research fund was simply a palliative effort by the university administration. But honestly, it’s been a joy to learn this wasn’t the sort of performative work I feared it might be. Instead, I am grateful I became part of a team that helped amplify Black students’ voices, chronicle their experiences, and communicate their needs to achieve pragmatic change.

Alazne Cameron is a senior English major from Kingston, Jamaica. She was a member of our peer research team Spring 2021 and she worked under the direction of Yewande O. Addie as our audio production lead Summer 2021. 

Tagged as: Black Storytelling Project