MOBILE, Ala. — The University of Mobile has been enrolling students for more than 60 years. Until this month, it had never had a Black Student Union.
That changed because four students decided to build one.
Kaden Raby, Izaiah Hemingway, Jaileb Ballard and Stephen Mixon founded the organization after a process that took roughly four months of meetings, paperwork and persuasion. Raby, a sophomore student-athlete, serves as founder and president.
“I feel like me starting a BSU gives Black students the opportunity to come together and educate others on our Black history,” Raby said. “It’s important for us to educate others on that.”
Four Months of Groundwork
The founding was not a matter of reserving a room and putting up a sign. Raby described a sequence of conversations with university faculty and staff that ran for months before the group had standing to do anything at all.
“This whole process took about 4 months. Talking to faculty and staff letting them know what I want to do, and then we had an approval meeting,” Raby said. “That’s really what set the tone, it was exciting. When we got approved that was really the first thing that got everybody’s attention.”
Chartering a new student organization at most universities requires a written constitution, a stated purpose, an identified faculty adviser and a formal review by a student life office or committee. It is a deliberately slow process, designed to confirm that a proposed group has a defined mission and the capacity to sustain itself past its founding class.
The approval, Raby said, was the moment the effort became real to the rest of campus.
Flyers, Social Media and 60 People in a Room
With approval secured, the founders publicized the first interest meeting the direct way: social media posts and flyers around campus.
More than 60 people showed up.
“We knew how much of a demand there was for it, but we didn’t know how big it would become,” said Hemingway, a sophomore and cofounder. “Once we saw everything in person that’s when it clicked that this is a big thing.”
The distinction Hemingway draws is worth sitting with. The founders had been confident there was demand — that confidence is what carried them through four months of process. What they had not anticipated was the scale of it, and seeing it physically in a room changed their sense of what they had started.
Building a Leadership Structure
The group’s stated focus is cultural education, connection and leadership development. Several students have already applied for officer positions as the organization works to establish a formal leadership structure.
That step matters for the organization’s longevity. A student group that depends entirely on its founders tends to dissolve when those founders graduate. Distributing responsibility across a slate of officers — and doing it early — is what allows a group to outlast the class that started it. Raby and Hemingway are sophomores; Ballard is a junior. The clock on that transition is already running.
Ballard said the early returns have been immediate.
“It’s only been two weeks and I already see different new connections. It’s been successful so far,” he said.
“Everyone Is Welcome”
Hemingway was emphatic that the organization is open to the entire student body.
“It was really God that we got everybody to come together. It was an open atmosphere, it is a Black Student Union but we emphasize that everyone is welcome,” Hemingway said.
That framing is consistent with how Black Student Unions generally operate on American campuses. The organizations are built to serve Black students specifically — providing community, cultural programming and a point of contact for shared concerns — while remaining open to any student who wants to participate. The two functions are not in tension, and the founders have been explicit that they do not intend them to be.
First Service Project: Feeding People
The organization’s first outward-facing commitment is not a social event or a lecture. It is a service shift.
The University of Mobile Black Student Union plans to serve with Love ALL Pantry on Monday and Tuesday, helping provide food to people experiencing homelessness.
Leading with a service project rather than a mixer is a choice, and it says something about how the founders want the group understood on campus and off it. The group says its next meeting will be announced soon.
What It Took
The through-line in every account from the four founders is the length of the runway. Four months of conversations with faculty and staff. An approval meeting that “set the tone.” Flyers and social media posts. Then 60 people in a room, and officer applications, and a food pantry shift.
For an institution more than six decades old, the organization is new. For the students who built it, it is the product of a semester’s worth of unglamorous work performed before anyone was watching.