Despite the sporadic rain, students ate, danced and celebrated the beginning of a new semester at UAB-BSB’s Back to School Jam Wednesday evening, an event geared toward bringing together new members and welcoming the black community back to NC State for another year.
The event hosted several black-student groups, both non-Greek affiliated and Greek affiliated, that either performed or hosted a booth for students participating in the event.
Performers included Dance Visions and United Praise Gospel Choir. Several student groups also performed musical acts.
The director of this UAB-BSB event, Amira Alexander, said she hoped the new members of the black community at NC State felt welcomed and apart of the culture here at NC State.
Others, such as Mariah Parker, said they enjoyed the performances and thought this was a good way to end the first day of classes.
Another performer, theDeepEnd, performed a few songs in the style of conscious hip-hop, highlighted by his new track “Stronger Than You’ll Ever Know.”
Showing his Alumni pride, Malcolm Brown, who graduated from the university this past spring, performed at this event to show support for the community.
The Kappa Xi chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Incorporated here at NCSU performed a combination of a step and a stroll exhibition as well. It’s a standing tradition that all active African American Greek life organizations perform at this annual event.
“It’s always an honor to be able to come out every year and perform,” said Kelly Darden, a senior in communication and president of Kappa Alpha Psi. “This event is especially catered to the freshmen so that they can be involved.”
Rizio Lewis-Streit, a senior in communication and a member of the group A.B.R. performed as well. Lewis-Streit said he wanted to perform as a student group, because he wanted to help others feel like a part of the student body.
“My favorite part of the event is seeing all the Greeks together hoppin’ steppin’ together in all the student unit,” Lewis-Streit said.
The group is also performing and closing Packapalooza this coming Saturday at 7 p.m.
Paige Hardy, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, also performed with her sisters to several songs and steps. She said her two favorite parts of this event were meeting and involving new students and running the booth in general. Something specifically she enjoys about this event is that she can showcase the sorority’s talents. They are reining Pan-Afrikan Step Show champions.
One booth, The Movement Merchandising, is a clothing company owned and run by two NC State students. Arlan Wallace, a junior majoring in Business Marketing, and Zack Fasica, a senior in chemistry, started the company by printing t-shirts at a local shop on Hillsborough Street and selling them until they had saved up enough money to buy their own press.
The business partners said they were previously friends before they started their clothing company due to their mutual desire to sell clothing college students would like and afford.
Wallace and Fasica have also opened their store as a consignment shop where students can buy and sell lightly used clothing they think someone else can use to complete their own sense of style.
Today at the event, The Movement Merchandising signed into a partnership with another clothing company named cherryDOTdork. They said they hope to grow and reach even more young adults in the area with their style-on-a-budget clothing company.
