B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S. supports male Afro-American students

by David Pollard

Male Afro-American students interested in different educational and cultural aspects of their native land can participate in a seven-year-old NIU group.

The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S. organization—Brothers Reaching Out To Help Enlighten and Rejuvinate Selfconciousness—will host an informational meeting Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Center for Black Studies.

“The scope and purpose is to uplift the black male educationally and culturally,” said B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S. President Michael Bonds.

The group organizes public meetings, conferences and events. The organization is working on bringing a Pan-African leadership conference to NIU in the near future, in addition to organinzing a Mister Black NIU.

The group also makes trips to inner-city high schools and lectures about college life in the hopes of motivating high school students to attend college, Bonds said.

Students interested in receiving a higher education need to be informed about the different aspects of college because the lack of information prospective students receive makes it easy for them to get confused about college life, he said.

“Personally, high school doesn’t prepare you to cope with a new (college) environment,” Bonds said. When students attend college, they do not get involved in culturally and educationally oriented groups, he said.

The organization follows a quote spoken by slain Civil Rights Activist Malcolm X that serves to keep its members together, Bonds said. The quote is, “Education is an important element in the struggle for human rights. It is the means to help our children and people rediscover their identity and thereby increase self-respect. Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today. Our children are being criminally short-changed by the public school system of America.”

Bonds said the quote keeps him and the other members of the group in check and in touch with the purpose of the organization. “We kind of adopted it to remind us of what we’re here for. Our main goal is to attract more black men to the way of knowledge,” Bonds said.