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The Athens community rallied to keep the Black alumni event on track after a pause
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Aaron Thomas figured if he could just pull together a big cookout at the last minute, it would be better than nothing. He’d even pay for it himself.
He was trying to salvage what he could after Ohio University announced in early March that it was putting a hold on the Black Alumni Reunion.
The event has been held every three years at Ohio University since the 1980s. But following months of planning for this year’s event, which was then just weeks away, the university said it could no longer host it.
University leaders were concerned some of the reunion programming might run afoul of recent guidance from the federal government regarding racial discrimination.
The reunion usually has a full slate of events over several days. Thomas, an Ohio University alum and an Athens-based DJ and event manager, was hoping to at least keep the cookout going — a reunion tradition that serves as both social mixer and networking event for alumni and students.
Meanwhile, Brandi Baker, an Ohio University alum who works at a college in Cleveland, quickly pulled together a virtual town hall to see what could be done. Well over 100 people attended. She followed up with a survey to get feedback from alumni on what they would like to see happen.
What followed from this initial outreach was more than the two could have imagined at the time: Athens-area residents, nonprofits, businesses and government officials volunteered their time, money and facilities, and beginning Thursday, university alumni will be returning to Athens after all for four days of events in what has been rebranded the Black Alumni Weekend.
Thomas said when he first learned the reunion was on hold, he thought, “I can’t let this go wayside. I was like, how hard could it be to put a cookout together in 30 days? Right? Well, needless to say, it went from a cookout to, alright, let’s put the networking events together. Alright, how can we have networking events throughout the weekend to work around people’s schedules? Because you’re going to have people trickling in Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So how can we have multiple networking events?”
It kept growing from there.
At first, there was no budget for any of this. “I mean, we really did this on hope and prayers that we are going to at least get a few dollars donated to us,” Thomas said. “If not, it was going to come out of me and Brandi’s pocket. So to be honest, me and Brandi’s like, alright, we just got to front the money. We’ll figure it out. It will come back to us somehow, some way.”
It helped that in 2018 Baker helped found the Racial Equity Coalition of Appalachia, a nonprofit organization that has regular meetings involving many of the people who stepped up to help salvage the reunion.
“Everyone was probably of the same mindset at the same time,” Baker said. “Once we said we still want to move forward, it was a easy. I don’t want to say it’s been easy trying to do it in a short amount of time, but it was easy to have partners at the table because they’ve already been at the table with (the coalition).”
The coalition provided a foundation to build a new event independent of the university that can serve as a template for future events.
Some of the Black Alumni Weekend events will still be on campus, but organizers had to pay the full cost for the spaces because the university is no longer a host and could not offer special discounts, Thomas said.
On the other hand, planning the event on their own gave organizers the freedom to work with local businesses to provide space, food and other services. Some businesses were not only anxious to be a part of the event but offered their services at a discount to help keep the costs down. Donations also started coming in.
“For us, it has just been a tremendous outpouring,” Thomas said. “They see this and for them it’s like, wow, it’s a tough reality to swallow that you’ve been told you can’t have your event because it has black in the title.”
And as it turned out, organizers didn’t have to plan everything from scratch. They were able to incorporate into their program some events that were already happening. For example, the Athens International Film + Video Festival is this week at the Athena Cinema. It’s on the Black Alumni Weekend schedule for Thursday.
Also on the schedule are heritage tours offered through the Mt. Zion Black Cultural Center, a tour of the Tablertown People of Color Museum, and a premiere screening of episode two of “Black Wall Street Athens,” a documentary that was already on the schedule for the reunion as originally planned.
“We just looked at how we could pivot and make this also a community effort of being able to support Bobcats and support African-American history and culture,” Baker said. “It’s kind of always a big heritage celebration and a cultural milestone to be able to have this event. So it was great to be able to know that community members who understood our mission and the intent to be able to help us support keeping the event going.”