Black History Month activities
ESPN commentator shares real-word advice with students
Position yourself to have a post-college career instead of simply a job, sports journalist and ESPN television personality Stephen A. Smith told Binghamton University students during a Black History Month speech on Feb. 22.
“A job is doing what you’ve got to do to pay the bills and maintain your quality of life,” he said. “A career is doing what you want to do. It doesn’t feel like work.”
Smith, who is featured weekdays on ESPN’s “First Take,” was the keynote speaker for the Black Student Union’s month of festivities. He spoke to a crowd of nearly all students in a packed Lecture Hall 1, offering real-world advice (without any notes, papers or props) for 40 minutes. He then took questions from the audience for another half hour.
“I always look forward to speaking to college students because I know you all think you know a lot, but the things you don’t know are very glaring,” he said. “You don’t know the world that awaits you because you haven’t been in it yet.
“It’s dog-eat-dog out there and you’d better be in school getting yourself ready to handle the business necessary in order to be successful or you’re not going to just be passed by. You are going to get stomped on and walked over.”
The advent of the technological age means that not everyone is qualified to work, Smith said.
“If you aren’t qualified, you can’t make money,” he said. “If you can’t make money, you’re broke. If you’re broke, you are a problem – because you are going to see to it that you cause problems for other people. … This is the real world. You have to be motivated to conquer it.”
Smith offered several tips for students to succeed in corporate America today.
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Edouard keynote for local NAACP chapter
Assistant Provost Randall Edouard was the keynote speaker for the opening of an exhibit by the Broome-Tioga Branch of the NAACP at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, in the second floor meeting room of the Binghamton Public Library on Court St. in Binghamton. Edouard spoke on “American History through the eyes of African Americans: The Civil Rights Movement.”
The exhibit of documents and artifacts from the personal collections of Greater Binghamton residents Billie Anderson and Ruth Lewis was curated by Brenda Brown. The artifacts showcased the Broome-Tioga Branch of the NAACP and its involvement with the National NAACP and the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 to present day.