Prairie View students gathered together in the Memorial Student Center on Dec. 3, as Prairie View Alumni Alzo Slade held a forum titled “Your Actions, Our Consequences” hosted by the Campus Activities Board. The student forum, also called “Niggatude,” was a chance for the University to come out and engage in a discussion with Slade as he covered trending topics like the state of black people, relationships, and Greek life.
The main focus was to talk about the different actions made by individuals, whether they are personal or general, and how the consequences can be detrimental for everyone around them. To make sure that the forum stayed intimate, Slade asked for students to stand up and ask questions during anytime of his discussion. The forum started out with slade addressing the state of intimate relationships between college students, and how the mindset of some young people may be average, but can have consequences.
This of course was a great topic to start out with because it allowed the audience to get engaged and really get a grasp of Slades’ personality and ideals. By talking about what it was like for him as a student, Slade was able to give personal consequences, and relay a lot of knowledge to the audience in hopes of encouraging everyone to make the right decisions and really think about the importance of their future instead of the pleasure of the “right now.” Although the talk about relationships was an interesting and important one, the main concept that seemed to always come back around was the issue of black mentality in today’s era and the history of slavery. Slade was able to give a brief history about slavery and how things that happened to our ancestors, have a huge impact on the mentality of blacks today. He also made a lot of examples for the students because of his intense knowledge of the subject, which may have caused the students’ minds and ways of thinking to be broadened and expanded. Toward the end of the forum, students asked many questions to get Slade’s opinions. Overall, the forum was one that every Prairie View student should have attended, it was one that was informational and resembled a real learning environment concerning important issues. Having Slade as the speaker was one aspect that truly made the forum a success because of the importance he saw in having a “discussion” as opposed to being a speaker on stage, because the topic was so important.