A new organization at Northern Illinois University is giving Black nursing students a safe space.
Kayla Brooks, who has since graduated, founded the Black Student Nurse Organization at NIU last year with the help of clinical instructor Rhoda Jefferson. Brooks, the former president, said her teacher Mary Rudnicki reached out and asked if she wanted to take the lead on starting this group.
"She was like, 'Hey, I noticed you are getting your certificate in Black Studies. We're really trying to make something work. Can you please help us with this project,' Brooks explained. "And I said absolutely, two things I'm most passionate about. Can't get any better than that."
Paris Ware is the current president. She proudly showed off the building that now houses the NIU’s nursing program. It is a part of the Wellness and Literacy Center at 3100 Sycamore Road in DeKalb. NIU"s School of Nursing moved last fall.
Ware is a fifth track nursing student. She was adopted by her grandmother who died prior to her beginning the program. She said starting the nursing program was hard for her. At the time, Ware said, she was still grieving.
“So those first three exams that I took back-to-back to back -- I failed them,” she recalled. “I was just really like going through so much. I'm having to work overnights, come to class three days a week, working four or five overnight shifts.”
She said the Black Student Nurse Organization offers study tables that will help students who need the help like she did when she first began. She explained that the group serves as a networking platform, and it also allows the students to have conversations that may not happen in other scenarios.
“It's hard being discriminated based off the color of our skin,” she said. “And I've have heard some stories where you know, there are like Black nurses who have been told to you know, like, I don't want that nurse in here because she's Black.”
She said some members of the group feel like they now have a voice. Ware mentioned that before the organization some students would not speak up in class. She also said many of them feel that they have to code-switch.
Code-switching is the act of changing one’s cultural identity based on the environment that they are in. This could include changing the way one talks, or even behaves. Often, this is done to make other cultures more comfortable.
“Coming into a nursing program, I did have a lot of trouble with it. I did,” she reiterated. “It was so different from just me being who I am from a young girl to now have to walk a certain way or like talk a certain way to not be stereotyped as another ghetto Black girl from Chicago.”
Ware said some of the Black students come from high schools that are predominantly Black and now they have to try to fit in at a primarily White Institution. She said this will help prepare them when they are in their careers but while at school, the organization gives them a safe space — a place where they can be themselves.
“What is better than having friends who can relate to what you're going through,” she added. “We're all having financial issues, we're all having issues maybe with our car, and you know, it's hard trying not to eat fast food and out, maybe we can, you know, put our money together and create a meal.”
Ware said before BSNO, she didn’t realize how many Black students were in the nursing program because the schedules are not similar, but this organization is bringing them together.
“B-SNO, it literally just means like the world to me. To be able to share my story, and also other fifth trackers, and basically tell them like, you will not be that 11% of Black nurses, that we have out in this world, you can be more than that you're just more than a number.”
Brooks said she hopes this organization benefits not only aspiring nurses, but others looking to work in the medical field.
“The whole area of medicine needs to be diversified,” she said. “Because you notice a lot of implicit bias and racial bias that happens within medicine.”
Ware is on track to graduate this May. She said when she’s gone, she wants this safe space – and the people in it – to continue to flourish.
