At the 39th Student Senate meeting Monday, discussions about the Strikers upcoming performance at the Disney World parade and the Student Bar Association’s requests for more funds took place.
Founder and artistic director of the FAMU Strikers, Shepiro Hardemon, announced the Strikers would perform at the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade on Dec. 25, and the 26th annual Christmas Day Show will air live on ABC.
“The Christmas day parade will be seen by 16 million people around the world and we will be representing Florida A&M University,” Hardemon said.
Disney will cover all of the expenses, but Hardemon said he spoke to the senate about receiving funds for a choreographer.
“We probably will be employing a choreographer to come in and give us something very special for this occasion,” Hardemon said.
Seku Nkrumah, the CEO of Black Star International, came to speak to the Senate about an issue he has seen on FAMU’s campus but not at predominantly white colleges.
“I graduated from a predominately white university, and there were 300 black students on the campus and one of the things we institutionalized was speaking to one another,” Nkrumah said.
Nkrumah said that students speaking now would lead to success through communication skills.
“One thing that’s real clear to me about the recent success that we have with President Obama’s campaign is that he did one thing that empowered him to reach the highest office in the country, and that was that he spoke,” Nkrumah said.
Students of the FAMU College of Law also came to speak to the senate about various organizations on the law school campus.
The College of Law recently earned full accreditation from the American Bar Association making them one of 189 schools fully approved by the ABA.
Students from the College of Law are now seeking additional funding. Student Bar Association President James Simmons said the funds that they receive are not enough.
“Our budget this year was inadequate and not able to satisfy some of the events that some of these organizations are putting on,” Simmons said.
If the organizations receive additional funds, Simmons said the money would be used to host various events, which he thinks is a great recruiting tool.
“The primary functions of these events is to bring more awareness to the legal community, bring more press and publicity to our law school, which in fact brings more positive light and more prestige to the university as a whole,” Simmons said.
One event the College of Law has planned is the Women’s Law Caucus Symposium in the spring.
“The symposium will be conducted by various attorneys and judges in the community, and they will be speaking about women’s issues in the law,” Simmons said.
Simmons said the law school would also host an environmental law symposium in 2010 that will bring the school national attention from environmental authorities.
He also said coming to the senate would also help improve relations and enhance communications with the college.
“We wanted to make sure that there was a strong connection between the main campus and our satellite campus,” Simmons said.