Members of both the Black Student Union and the Umoja Club on campus held a game night Thursday, Oct. 24 to allow new and current members to unwind and get better acquainted with each other over games such as Monopoly, Uno, Twister and Cards Against Humanity.

Tables were set up on the Student Center stage to allow students to have a space to feel comfortable and a chance to unwind from the stress of midterms.

President of the Black Student Union and English major Nai Galloway, stated she was happy with game night turn out of both club members and students who just wanted to participate in an environment where they can feel at ease.

Galloway states, “I’m happy especially because the majority of our students here are students of color, I know it’s hard for us to find a place on campus where we can kinda just sit down, relax and like be ourselves so this kind of event, I feel like, creates kind of a safe haven for us.”

BSU plans to host another game night in the future due to the positive reception and turnout.

Kinesiology major and Umoja member Trevor Hooks, who was playing Cards Against Humanity alongside fellow Umoja and BSU members states what he thought about the game and event.

Hooks said, “this whole game, I think, is dope , it’s nice seeing everyone here. I think it’s dope because you don’t really get to just play games in college so it’s good that we get one time out of the semester to just chill and lay back.

The decision to host a game night was ultimately decided by BSU members, but the idea was brought forth by BSU media officer and journalism major Desmond Byrd.

Byrd stated his reasoning for suggesting a game night was because, ” I especially wanted something that everybody can do not just something where, I didn’t want an event where everybody can do something on a daily regular basis because not many people do game nights like that so I say ‘You know what?, let’s have us a little game night’ The turnout is pretty good, everyone is having fun, everybody having laughs, that’s what it’s all about.”

English professor and BSU advisor Damon Cagmolatti states that one of the main goals the union hoped to achieve by hosting this event was a sense of comradery amongst members and other Cerritos College students who wanted to participate in the event as well.

Cagmolatti states, “Comradery is really the biggest thing that we get from this kind of event because it’s one of the central pillars of community, I think, of an organization like BSU, is that the thing about these events is that they are really the products of them working together, them kinda executing, planning figuring out the logistics and stuff like that, all of those things there take unity and in order to actually create or really kind of like engage in the fullness of self-expression, fullness of who you are, sometimes you kind of need some other people to like help support you in order to kind of get that voice out there so really this an expression, an extension of the voice of the leaders of BSU.”

According to Cagmolatti, the Black Student Union has been an active organization on the Cerritos College campus for a number year and “more or less the common major goal and aim organization is to provide some resources for students all across campus, part of the way that they actually do that is by teaching, by showing and also by explaining some of the various practices that come out of African American culturally history and also to cultural African American traditions in order to kind of meet some of the students’ needs academically, socially and also too, just in terms of their identity.”