By Miranda Perez & Arianna Johnson
Students nationwide are competing online for the opportunity to win funding for their prospective HBCUs and openly expressing where they’d like the money to go, upon their win.
Every year HBCUs search for funding to renovate their campuses — Home Depot stepped up to the plate in ways unimaginable prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A majority of HBCU students have been left with no other option than to resort to e-learning or hybrid learning amidst the pandemic. This has allowed students to spend more time than ever online, particularly using challenges to stay connected with their peers.
The annual ‘Retool Your School’ competition started in 2009. The Home Depot’s Retool Your School competition amongst HBCUs across the country to fund on-campus renovations. Over the program’s cycle, they’ve gifted $3.1 million in grants to winning schools.
The process is simple. With 62 schools participating this year separated into three clusters, schools cast votes on the Retool Your School website, on social media platforms using hashtags and competing in weekly challenges. n30 schools from the three clusters will be the final winners.
HBCUs have historically been underfunded with many having decades old dorms and buildings still present on campus. Common themes amongst schools are the lack of air conditioning in dorms, mold in buildings and outdated furniture. Students have complained about the lack of upgrades.
Tougaloo College’s worn out baseball stadium is what Khiara Lee, a senior biology major at Tougaloo College wants to see fixed if her university were to win the competition.
For students at Alabama A&M University, winning this competition wouldn’t be foreign as they’ve done it twice in the past. Their grants went toward building a new quad in 2012 and renovating a fine arts building in 2009. Students got crafty in their strategy by having day and night shifts for their Twitter campaigns and relying heavily on their alumni.
“We’re not a ‘name brand’ HBCU. We see that we are not handed anything, so when these types of initiatives come out we really jump on the opportunity,” Karl Moore, a senior chemistry major at Alabama A&M University stated in regards to the competition.
Other schools like Howard University, Tougaloo College and Tuskegee University joined forces to assist one another. Because each school was in separate clusters, the student bodies used all three’s hashtags to boost up their votes.
“Twitter has been the biggest platform. I’ve seen everybody just retweeting the hashtag or they’ll tweet something random like ‘I just had cereal for breakfast,’ and they’ll put the hashtags and we all just jump on it,” Kandis Fletcher, a freshman psychology major at Howard University stated.
Solidarity amongst HBCUs is no surprise as students understand each individual institution has its own problems and needs. Most students have hopes in other underprivileged HBCUs to win over their respective institutions.
Sizwe Chapman, a senior CTEMS (cinema,television, and emerging media studies
major) at Morehouse College would like to see the ‘Retool Your School’ money go to “growing different parts of the campus that are not as visible. Creative spaces like The Maroon Tiger, Inclusive spaces like Morehouse Adodi, and innovative spaces like Morehouse’s STEM department. Allocating resources there will not only allow students to be able to prosper but will also reveal how diverse and talented these students that make up the college are,” Chapman said.
But if Morehouse does not win, Chapman is rooting for Clark Atlanta University or Bennett College to win, especially after Bennett College’s run-in with losing its accreditation in 2019.
Ashley Pitt, a freshman at Clark Atlanta University has never stepped foot on campus due to the pandemic, but has been one of the most active participants in gaining CAU’s momentum on winning the competition.
“I’m a very competitive person so in the beginning I created spam pages on twitter to boost us up but they kept getting suspended and my own personal account too so I had to chill but I still do it occasionally. I also created fake scenarios for retweets. I said I got a scholarship and that took off but then Clark actually messaged me to celebrate the win but I let them know and we joked about it,” Pitt said.
Pitt would like to see the money go to CAU’s lack of housing for upperclassmen.
Winners for the ‘Retool Your School’ competition will be announced April 14, 2021.