“Coming to Boston Has Been a Release”
Posse student reflects on the first semester away from home
Get the Flash Player to see this media.
Click on the video above to hear Shaylithia Copeland (COM’12) reflect on her first semester at BU.
Shaylithia Copeland (COM’12) has the makings of a young urban leader. Despite being raised by a single mother in one of Atlanta’s roughest neighborhoods and graduating from a high school where metal detectors and pregnant classmates were part of everyday life, she was determined to leave the city, attend college, and one day give back to the community. And that’s what Posse — the organization that brought her and 11 other Atlanta-area students to campus this year on a Boston University scholarship — is all about.
The Posse Foundation is a national nonprofit program that recruits and trains groups of talented, leadership-oriented urban youth for life on American college and university campuses. The idea is to send a team of like-minded kids from similar backgrounds to top-tier colleges, where they support and encourage one another in what can be a bewildering world of privilege and opportunity. After a semester at BU, Copeland says, she’s already seen how helpful the program can be.
“I really had a hard time trusting that people could come through for me,” she says. “Posse has really helped me with that. I’ve met a group of dynamic leaders who are just as, or even more, capable of completing jobs as I am.”
Robin Berghaus can be reached at berghaus@bu.edu. Caleb Daniloff can be reached at cdanilof@bu.edu.
Comments & Discussion
Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.