A meeting space founded by Black students at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over 50 years ago will no longer be available to students, the university has decided. This change is in direct response to guidance by the Trump administration as part of the White House’s anti-DEI initiatives. The school’s Black Student Movement is pushing back against the changes, objecting to the accusation that the Upendo Lounge represented a discriminatory space.
Black Student Movement’s Upendo Lounge restricted after DEI changes
The Black Student Movement at The University of North Carolina learned in September that they and other student organizations would no longer have access to the Upendo Lounge, a space created by the BSM in 1973. The BSM created the Upendo Lounge in 1973 in Chase Dining Hall; in 2003, the lounge moved to its current location in SASB (the Student and Academic Services building) North in 2003.
The BSM, one of UNC’s most premier student organizations, includes alumni such as Blavity’s managing editor, Trey Mangum, who was president of the organization from 2014 to 2015.
Per WRAL, a 1973 Daily Tar Heel article about the Upendo Lounge reported that “although open to the whole campus, it will serve as a center where black students can gather … or socialize in a predominantly black atmosphere.” Despite it being open to all, access to the lounge has now been restricted to administrative units in SASB, taking away the ability of students to book the space, as a result of changing DEI policies.
In 2024, the UNC System Board of Governors adopted a new DEI policy that eliminated a number of diversity-related programs, offices and funding positions across the state’s public university system. In July, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo offering guidance on university activities that could violate federal anti-discrimination policies. “Even if access is technically open to all, the identity-based focus creates a perception of segregation and may foster a hostile environment,” Bondi’s memo said. The note specified that it covered “any resource allocation-such as study spaces, computer labs, or event venues that segregate access based on protected characteristics, even if intended to create ‘safe spaces.’”
BSM calls on university to restore access, ‘stand up to federal government pressure’
The Black Student Movement addressed the change in an Oct. 10 press conference. Adam Sherif, current president of BSM, said that the university informed the organization of its change based on the charge that the Upendo Lounge “facially discourage students of other races from accessing the space” and “may foster a hostile environment,” according to The Daily Tar Heel. Sherif disputed this characterization, noting that non-Black students and student organizations could and did use the lounge as well. Sherif characterized the change in policy as terminating BSM’s “co-ownership” of the lounge, while the university has maintained that the lounge and the SASB “are and always have been wholly owned and managed by the University,” per an emailed statement UNC Media Relations sent to The Daily Tar Heel.
The BSM has objected to the change, the rationale for the new policy and the process by which it was implemented, claiming that UNC offered to consult with the BSM about the new federal guidelines but instead dictated the change to them when the BSM finally met with university officials. “We were there to be told, not heard,” Sherif said. The BSM has demanded that UNC “stand up to federal government pressures” and restore BSM’s “co-ownership” of the Upendo Lounge, according to The Daily Tar Heel. The student organization is additionally demanding that the university install a plaque written by the organization outside the lounge, while returning original pieces of artwork from the lounge and maintaining copies of art within the space. In a social media post about the situation, the BSM stated, “We are here. We have always been here. And we will not be removed.”
The future of the Upendo Lounge remains uncertain; it has been speculated that the university may transform it into a conference room, which UNC maintains has always been one of the space’s functions. What ultimately ends up happening to this space may be indicative of the larger fate of Black-centered student activities at UNC and around the country as university and federal anti-DEI policies impact student life around the United States.