The Black Student Union is an organized club at John Carroll. It was first introduced in 2020 by alumna Kiana Miller ‘20 as her Senior Project.

Some of Kiana’s goals with BSU included educating and making John Carroll’s students more comfortable.
Due to the pandemic and the closure of the building beginning in March of last year, Kiana was not able to lead BSU last year, so she passed the club to current senior Chiamaka Iheoma.
Chiamaka said that during Black Student Union meetings members “discuss topics such as micro aggressions and police brutality and try to come up with solutions that we as young people can create.”
The group meets every G day through Teams.
In honor of Black History Month, the club organized announcements and gave teachers suggestions on what to talk about in class to honor historic black figures.
Chiamaka said “In the beginning of the year, The BSU created a list of topics along with sources to introduce into the curriculum especially during Black History Month. So far we’ve had teachers implement these ideas such as talking about Henrietta Lacks in science classes and announcing a famous black historical figure every day over announcements.”
As BSU is ready and bringing changes to John Carroll, Chiamaka said, “I think the BSU is important because nothing like it has existed at John Carroll. Throughout my four years I have not always felt the most welcome and comfortable at the school, so my main goal was to create a safe place for minority students but also to help educate the larger mass of students. I noticed a lot of the injustice I noticed at school was brought out by lack of information, and so the BSU is trying to educate its student bodies on different hardships people of color go through.”
The Black Student Union has many other plans this year and in following ones to come aside from Black History month to represent black people.