From Alma Mater Vol. 4: The South.

You can read the full four-volume Alma Mater collection here.

*Barry University*

You can observe it here, but it’s present everywhere.

Barry University was built with catholic tenets and resided in Dominican heritage,
but its inclusion can be seen in the diversity spotted in Miami Shores that reaches out progressively each year on this campus, beginning with a kick-off BBQ where wedges are carried away like a Golf Cart Parade and the spoken word of solidarity comes together in concert with these different forms where their different norms becomes a multicultural tradition including Bucfest where Barry Beauties flex the power of the gift of laughter.
There is a reason we don’t name our Block Party after Barry: It’s Universal,
And like our H20, the water shared goes beyond this pool or the one named after Gene,
It is in all of us
Like the love for Miami’s Moonlight Madness
And the capacity to transform tribal beliefs into an inner knowledge that drowns out empty word wars and crashes the political parties by driving past the dividers

Into a place where the phrase “All White Party” allows every background to GLO.

Some say Floridians have a time machine,
That many are stuck in the past.
We would love to take credit for something found throughout these Shores by showing off our student body
which shows what makes America so beautiful.
But no, it’s everywhere.

From the most rural hut of the deep south to the fierce nightclubs of Miami Florida.
It’s in the natural bob of the head when the music of artists from different ethnicities vibrates in the soul of the most vocal tribalist.
It is in the cheer when someone whose appearance could not be more different from one’s own catches the game-winning touchdown pass whether here at home or somewhere up north in Poughkeepsie. And it’s in every contribution left in life’s account from donators believed to be blacklisted
Which has already infiltrated the guardian’s DNA.

There are some who upon learning how many try to keep outsiders from entering their homes through preemptive mandate or premarital disownership, forget what even these guardians don’t seem to realize:
Their home has been open to all—all along.
For no matter how many doors may be slammed across the region, they cannot shut the world out.

We wish we could tell you this is a Barry thing. Then take pride in it. And tell you to enroll to experience this utopia. But no. The fact is, though it may be more pronounced on this campus, this truth speaks for itself in the shared moments with those not present and how this great American experiment has already made America great again, and again, and again, whenever a happy home shares its joy with the intruder it cannot keep out.

Buccaneers who have ventured to leave their barred space to discover a site where love is explored in all its different shades:

Welcome to your new home…

But you’ve been living there all along.

Copyright © 2017 Clyde Aidoo