Acorn

Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: TRUE DREW

Media Credit: Christa Van Eerde

To salve Drew University's diversity issues, the administration can look no further than Ubuntu, Drew's Pan-African Choir, and its co-founder, Dawud Ingram. Ubuntu, the multi-racial gospel ensemble comprised of nearly 60 Drew students from all walks of life, means "unity," Ingram says. From his time also serving as a Kuumba board member, a peer counselor for Educational Opportunity Scholars and as a Student Government Association senator, Ingram has striven to unite the Drew community by spreading and celebrating Drew's diversity-all with a broad smile and a deep, infectious laugh.

Though he enjoyed and utilized the summer of EOS preparation before his freshman year, Ingram contemplated having his first year at Drew be his last. Arriving at Drew with buried dreams of attending Princeton, Georgetown or Howard University, Ingram's first-semester disenchantment of Drew turned into second-semester disgust when a 2005 April Fool's issue of The Acorn amplified campus racial tension to the point where Ingram contemplated transfer. Instead, Ingram stood his ground and decided to act. He assisted Umoja house when it put together a 24-hour teach-in on racial diversity.

"The good thing that came out of [The Acorn incident] was that it made me realize I wanted to get involved in leadership roles," he says.

Before his sophomore year even began, Ingram took his first steps in becoming the Drew community leader he is today. Ingram returned to the summer EOS program as peer counselor, citing his previous summer as an invaluable experience in the high school-to-college transition. He has worked as an EOS peer counselor for the past three summers.

"He's been sort of like my personal assistant since his sophomore year," Assistant Director of EOS Twannah Ellington says. "He's been able to connect with the students more readily than I can."

With sophomore year in full-swing, Ingram became Kuumba's co-publicist. In subsequent years, his tireless involvement earned him the positions of co-chair last year and senior advisor this year. "That's one of my babes," Ingram says, in reference to the Pan-African organization.

Another one of his babes is Ubuntu. Last year, Ingram, along with a half-dozen friends, received funding from the Presidential Initiative Fund to start the Pan-African choir. Ingram is amazed and thrilled that the choir, which just returned from its first east-coast tour, is such a blossoming success.

Continued...

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