Source: The Washington Post / Getty
Artists from Gucci Mane’s The New 1017 label embarked on a major Historically Black College and University tour last week. Rappers Big Fizzle, Big Scarr, Enchanting, Hotboy Wes and Bigwalk Dog pulled out all the stops during their high energy performances at Jackson State University and Morehouse College, but the group’s scheduled show at Howard didn’t go as planned.
Students at the HBCU have been staging a series of protests against the unlivable campus conditions they are being forced to live with. According to Fox 5 DC, students have complained about seeing rats and roaches in their rooms on campus. A few startling videos that have surfaced across social media show water spewing from damaged pipes along with mildew and white mold growing out of air filters and ceilings in the rooms. As a result, The 1017 crew decided to cancel their scheduled performance to stand in solidarity with students, Uproxx noted.
Big Scarr and his manager took to their Instagram stories to share snippets of the protests with fans. In one post, Scarr’s manager wrote, “We’re still here! Students you are the revolution. We are the revolution. This is not okay.” Another video shows the artists standing with students as they sleep outside Howard’s Blackburn University Center campus building demanding change.
According to Teen Vogue, students are now in week two of what they are calling the Blackburn Takeover sit-in. Protesters began occupying the area on Oct. 12 and have slept in the center since the strike began. Students are demanding that the university president Dr. Wayne Frederick work with the board of trustees to solve the housing crisis issue. The protest has also been ignited by the steep climb in tuition prices that students have had to endure this year along with a lack of COVID-19 testing.
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Howard released a statement on Oct. 13, giving an update on the current housing status for the academic year. On Oct. 14, the school issued another statement that claimed they were working together with representatives of the Undergraduate Student Assembly to find a solution on how to resolve the housing crisis.
You can read both statements down below.
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