With great power comes great responsibility, and the newly crowned queens of Loyola’s Black Student Union said they are up for the challenge.
Junior Faith Hogg and Sophomore Morgan Love were two of the five contestants that competed in the 2022 Black Student Union Pageant on Thursday, March 31, 2022.
Hogg and Love won and said they are now looking forward to following through with their respective community service programs on campus now that they have the platform to do so.
Participants in the multi-part pageant were asked to create and pitch a plan for change on campus. The proposals ranged from academic enrichment programs to mental health awareness campaigns.
As the winners of the competition, Hogg and Love will now see their projects come to life.
Hogg’s plan is to educate students of color on dating violence and its long term effects. She said it is important for students to be able to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship early in the dating process.
“I’m really excited to start working on that and to educate and motivate other students to make sure that no Black woman and no Black man ends up in an abusive relationship,” Hogg said.
Love said she developed the concept for her program while at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi. The Support of Creative Reconciliations Empowered by Arts and Mental Awareness, abbreviated as SCREAM, combines the arts with mental health education, “creating a space that is progressive, fun, and creative.”
“It will be a place where people can talk about mental health safely, adequately and efficiently while also partaking in the creative arts,” Love said.
Hogg and Love are the first royal representatives to be crowned since 2020, after the pandemic forced the organization’s executive board to cancel the 2021 pageant.
Love said she’s honored to take on her new responsibilities and represent the Black community on campus.
“To have this position, to be a representative, to be able to show my face on campus and people know what this means, to know what the Black Student Union is, is just amazing,” Love said.
Hogg said she is looking forward to leaving her mark and joining the organization’s legacy.
“I remember at one point in time just questioning my purpose and what I was doing here at Loyola,” Hogg said. “Now I am not just representing myself, but also representing the students that look like me to make sure that even after I’m gone from Loyola that the students that look like me have a space to feel appreciated on Loyola’s campus.”