Established as a weekend resource for young African American men, the Academy provides the boys a place to go to for recreation and academics on Saturdays, supplying facilities and tutors, one of whom is Karega. As a role model and a tutor, Karega became involved with the help of Assistant Athletic Director Billy McBride.
“[McBride] thought it would be a good opportunity for me to go … and kind of be a role model for them in a way that I’m also a minority but I’m a female,” Karega said. “In society today we have little gender barriers and he wanted me to go and represent myself and Amherst as an African American female role model to them, as a hockey player, as a student at an elite college [and] as a person who grew up in the inner-city.”
To support their mentor, the group came to campus to experience a college environment and cheer for Karega in her hockey game. After they arrived on campus, Black Studies Professors Rowland Abiodun, Jeff Ferguson, Miriam Goheen and Hilary Moss encouraged them to aim for college and discussed the experience of African Americans in elite universities, according to Goheen.
“Professor Ferguson mostly talked about going to college, going to an elite school as an African American man coming from a different background from most of the people you go to school with,” Goheen recalled. “Also, how important it is who you hang out with at school… He wasn’t saying, ‘Don’t hang out. Don’t have friends.’ He was just saying that you have to be aware of what your friends are doing and what you’re doing and don’t let what they’re doing persuade you not to do what you want to do.”
The boys were inspired by the professors’ message, which resonated with their own lives.
“[The professors] talked to this group about their beginnings, about how they got to where they are,” McBride recounted. “It was great for them to look at that and say, ‘Wow. Some of these stories are what I’m going through now.’ So it was all about possibilities, about how you have possibilities.”
The faculty’s voluntary involvement also allowed the boys to see a trusting student-teacher relationship, one that McBride hopes they will carry back to their schools.
“They felt like they could trust,” he said. “They felt there was a trust because they saw the trust between Tarasai and her professors, so they thought, ‘Oh I can trust my teachers. They do have my best interests at heart.’”
After a question and answer session, the group ate at Valentine Dining Hall and attended a squash match before heading to the rink to watch Karega play, an experience that was new for many of the boys.
“I [knew] that the majority of the boys had never seen a hockey game before so [it was] for them to come out and experience something new, something that’s tangible for them,” said Karega. “They can play hockey too. But for them to see, ‘Yes there are minorities who play hockey and attend college,’ gives them an opportunity and perhaps inspire them to one, go to college, and to come to a place like Amherst.”
The visit also gave the professors
a sense of accomplishment and reaffirmed their career choice, according to Moss.
“The most meaningful part of the day for me was seeing what [Karega], as a current and former student, [was] able to pull together,” said Moss. “It made me appreciate my role as an educator on a different level by seeing how [she has] now become a teacher. It also made me appreciate being part of a department that comes together in support of its students.”
With a connection now formed between the boys and the College, McBride hopes to continue the partnership by setting up a summer baseball clinic for the boys coached by members of the College baseball team. Karega’s efforts formed the beginning of the relationship between Amherst students and the Academy students, and highlighted the ability of each student to impact the lives of others in the community, said McBride.
“This is possible,” he remarked. “You don’t have the resources to do everything, but what does it take to drive down the road and engage somebody and all of a sudden, expose them to what the majority of the students here have. That’s a lot, and we have a lot to offer.”