New NAACP chapter chartered at Rider
By Julia Train
In December 2022, Student Government Association President Naa’san Carr had a vision to leave a lasting legacy by building upon the representation of diversity, equity and inclusion on campus.
After over a year of working to establish the new chapter of the NAACP at Rider, the chapter’s founding members saw its chartering ceremony on Feb. 7.
Carr started with reaching out to the NAACP chapter of Gloucester County, New Jersey, to get in touch with the state adviser.
In July, Black Student Union President Kayla McIntyre met Trenton NAACP President Austin Edwards which led Carr contact the state adviser.
During that process, Carr was working on getting the chapter approved by the university through meetings with Rider President Gregory Dell’Omo and the Board of Trustees.
In October, he started focusing on the chapter’s membership. In order to complete that process, there needed to be 25 members.
Within two weeks, it was officially chartered and approved.
“Things didn’t happen the way it was supposed to happen … I was very persistent with emailing people, but I just didn’t get the response back until we finally got it this year,” Carr said.
Taylor Tunstall, a senior journalism major, is one of the founding members. She received an email about the forthcoming chapter and signed up.
About a month later, Tunstall received a membership card for her keyring in the mail.
Tunstall said, “Of course, once I leave, it’s up to the people after me to keep it going, but just knowing that we made the steps to have it here, especially after hearing from Rutgers New Brunswick alum say how when they went to college, they wish they had it.”
There are 25 founding members, but not all executive positions are filled. Carr’s goal is to place them within the coming months. The positions include second and third vice presidents, assistant secretary and assistant treasurer, along with 10 committee chairs.
Although there wasn’t trouble finding members, with over 100 people expressing interest at a game night event prior, Carr said the biggest hurdle was actually paying for membership and getting it in on time. NAACP state leadership reached out to them about three days before the money was due and scheduled a Zoom meeting to discuss it.
The amount needed for the dues was $125, which SGA paid, while the advisers paid their own $75 fees.
“The importance of the NAACP is to combat racial hatred and discrimination … it goes hand-in-hand with our inclusive excellence plan that we have here,” Carr said. “In the grand scheme of the vision, I didn’t know we were going to go through all these transitions with the DEI. So I’m happy that I was very persistent on this because this is going to help students use their voices in a way that they weren’t able to use them before.”
