Howard University

This summer on Howard University’s campus, there is a group of high school-aged Black youth from the DMV, Roanoke, Va., and New York City who are settling into one of the dorms for the next six weeks to learn, serve, and bond as part of a very special brotherhood.

My mother once said to me that history is the skeleton inside a living country. It made sense to me that if we haven’t formed a clear understanding of what happened and why, how are we to make good decisions going forward?

I am a junior at Howard University, and on November 5, I had the pleasure of voting for my alumna, Vice President Kamala Harris, alongside my mother and father. Although it was not my first time voting, it was my first presidential election.

On Election Day, what began as a Howard University party in every way, slowly turned into a gathering reminiscent of a memorial as Harris-Walz supporters began to realize that the polls were reflecting what they had dreaded since July 21 when President Joe Biden endorsed his vice president to be his successor in the Oval Office.

Monique Poydras was at a reggae concert at a vineyard in Linganore, Maryland, when her phone began vibrating frantically. As text after text and call after call rolled in, the device continued to shake until it eventually fell off the chair.