OPINION: The AUC Needs to Stop Competing and Start Collaborating
The Atlanta University Center Consortium is built on the idea of community, but it sometimes feels like the community fades when competition gets involved.
Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morris Brown have a history of school pride and traditional rivalry. While competition can bring excitement throughout the campuses, it can also bring a divide that lasts throughout the entire year. Instead of constantly going against each other trying to prove which one is “better,” we should focus more on what could happen if all three institutions come together.
While competition between the schools is evident, the bigger issue may be how disconnected students feel from each other.
Students within the AUC do not interact as if we are in one community. They tend to stay within their respective campuses, events, and organizations.
“Honestly, I stay really just with Morehouse. I have no other classes or any other organizations with other schools...It’s hard to make friends with people at other schools because you’re not really talking to them. You don’t really have any reason to,” said Jiovanni Jackson, a sophomore at Morehouse.
Other students also voiced that they feel as if the AUC operates as three separate schools rather than one community. Some say the cancellation of the Olive Branch, an event where Clark Atlanta, Spelman, Morehouse, and Morris Brown come together to create new friendships and community, is to blame for that.
While we do have issues with division within the AUC, there are possible actions we can take towards solutions. One solution is having more student organizations combine their resources to become something bigger and better.
“At the end of the day, all of us are like brother and sister, and we should lean more into that.” —Mackenzie Hicks
There are many similar organizations around the schools that, if opened AUC-wide, would allow for better funding, more outreach and awareness, and most importantly a way for all schools to feel included and closer to their peers. Students also say that AUC students always tend to meet in more professional settings; they wish there were more community events among the three schools.
“There would be more opportunities for us to meet each other in a more social setting rather than business settings where we can show our full personalities,” says Clark Atlanta Sophomore, Alana Myrie. Other students are thinking big, suggesting ideas like having Olive Branch-like events happening every year for every class, as well as a huge joint homecoming that will bring all students and alumni together instead of having multiple separate ones.
The AUC has the potential to be communal—to be a place where friendships develop, organizations thrive, and ideas can be spread across all campuses.
Friendly competition will always be the common denominator of the AUC, but it should not be what tears us and our opportunities to connect apart.
From the words of Spelman College Junior, Mackenzie Hicks: “At the end of the day, all of us are like brother and sister, and we should lean more into that.”
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