News Archives - 1999

Augsburg College was represented by 17 students from its Pan-Afrikan Student Union at the 23rd annual Pan-African Student Leadership Conference on Feb. 25-27 at Minnesota State University-Mankato. The students attended workshops and seminars and listened to speakers from around the country.

Augsburg junior Trena Bolden, co-chair of Augsburg's Pan-Afrikan Student Union, won the annual Pan-African talent ceremony and was named "Ms. Pan-Afrikan." She will represent the conference for the next year. Also in the competition was sophomore Tenelle Russ, who did a poetic recitation and was third runnerup.

Augsburg students Kitesso Chiri and Dula Taddese led a panel discussion entitled "The Oromo Question." Their presentation was important and led to other discussions on the future of Ethiopia, said Mufundisi Joe Young, director of Pan-Afrikan Student Services at Augsburg.

Young said all the Augsburg students did excellent jobs and stood out with both their performance and presentation.

Other Augsburg students attending the conference were Dalicia Anderson; Justin Day; Fatoumata Diagne; Jeremy Felder; Rozenia Fuller; Mark Harris; April Jennings; Matt Lang; Dwayne Lowman; Aika-Ruwa Temu; Brenda Valentine; Rico Washington; and Zabrina Washington.

This year's conference as well as the 1998 conference had a theme of "Educating and Equipping African and African-American Students for the 21st Century," which will also carry over to the 2000 conference. Young said the conference was attended by about 200 college students and 80 high school students. He said that in addition to schools from Minnesota, students from DePaul University (Ill.) and the University of Montana also attended the conference.