MLK Student Voices Award

Interested undergraduates and graduate students are invited to respond to the quote below for this year's Award. We ask submissions to respond to the quote below and answer the question, "What does love and creativity look like for you in the service of action for love and justice?"

This year, the planning committee for the annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration invites students to submit materials for the Student Voices Award - an opportunity to uplift student responses to our theme, "We Don't Have Much Time:" Raising Consciousness and Building the Future Now. This comes from the quote “But we do not have much time. The revolutionary spirit is already world-wide. If the anger of the people of the world at the injustice of things is to be channeled into a revolution of love creativity, we must begin now to work, urgently, with all peoples to shape a new world.” -Trumpet of Conscience, p. 50 from “Youth and Social Action” and quoted in Jean-Charles, ch. 2

This annual Celebration is meant to offer the Tufts community a time to participate in the ongoing university commitment to racial justice by honoring what we learn from the past, listening deeply to current voices of change, imagining together for Tufts, and celebrating a future of Beloved Community. This year, we want to invite student voices - through essays, poems, spoken word, songs, art, or performances - to be a part of our community celebration. Details are below:

• Submissions must be original work, but can have been created for another class, activity, or contest
• Submissions can be considered as essays, poems, songs, art, and performances; we will accept content in pdf, MP4, MOV, jpeg, and png
• Submissions are due by Wednesday, January 18 at 11:59 p.m. ET (submissions are currently closed)

A small committee including members of the planning team for the Celebration will choose up to three winners. The winners will be chosen based on organization, clarity, creativity, originality, and relationship to the 2023 theme. There will be a cash prize for each winner, and one of the winners will be invited to present at the Celebration on Monday, January 30, 2023. The submissions will be displayed on the Africana Center and the University Chaplaincy website.