Editor’s note: People of UW is a human interest series produced by The Badger Herald staff members. The series aims to highlight a student or student group at the University of Wisconsin making an impact on the campus community. These Q&As are lightly edited or shortened for clarity and style.

Please introduce yourself (hometown, year, major, role on campus).

My name is Caasi Woji. I’m a senior from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I am majoring in management, human resources and marketing with a certificate in leadership within the Business School. In addition to that, I am a co-Chair for the Black History Month Planning Committee.

Tell us more about your responsibilities as Chair of the Black History Month Planning Committee. What do you do? Who do you work with?

As a co-chair for the Black History Month Planning Committee, I work with our advisor Lauren Adams. She is the Black Cultural Center Program Coordinator within the Multicultural Student Center. And then also I work with my co-Chair Kayla Ollie. We formulate the leadership group, and as leadership we help manage the four subcommittees that make up the Planning Committee.

What inspired or led you to taking on this position?

Going back to high school, I was a part of the Black Student Union at my school, and we often planned Black History Month. I didn’t really know too much about Black History Month on campus coming into my freshman year.

And then when I saw the events happening I was like, how do I get involved with that? So getting involved is really easy. There is an application that we give out I believe late September, early October. There’s an informational meeting that goes through who the Black History Month Planning Committee is, what we do, the timeline and the requirements of time management we have.

Tell us more about the Black Love: Rooted, Radiant, Revolutionary theme guiding this year’s celebration. How do you decide on a theme and how does it guide your planning?

So I actually wrote the theme for this year. I was just brainstorming ideas with our advisor, Lauren, and my friends and I always talk about Black love. We see it in media and are like, “oh, that’s Black love right there.” We kind of just note it a lot. And I think that Black love has many different avenues just like love in general.

It could be romantic, which is primarily highlighted, it can be familial, it can be friendship, it could be self love. And so that’s what I wanted to highlight and get students thinking about, like, love for their community, for their villages.

So I wrote the theme for this year, and I brought it to the informational meeting to get an idea of interest in the theme. And then when we had selected the general body for the committee, I brought it up again and people didn’t really have other themes to contribute at the time, so that was kind of set in stone as our theme because it resonated with many people on the Planning Committee.

Are there any key events or ones that stand out to you that students can look forward to attending in February?

I’m looking forward to our keynote with Yolo Akili Robison, because he’s going to take us through a workshop on self love and love for our community. I think he will bring a different perspective, a professional perspective of course, that the students don’t necessarily have.

Another event I’m looking forward to is our kickoff event, Rooted in Love: A Black Wedding because we’re going to be looking at Black wedding traditions. I feel like I haven’t been to many weddings, but I think from the weddings I’ve seen, I’ve seen a decrease in some of those traditions like foreign libations, jumping the broom I feel like is a very popular one, but crossing the sticks you don’t really see as prevalent today.

How can UW students get involved with Black History Month planning in the future? What is your advice for those interested in this experience?

I think the biggest thing is to follow @uwmadisonbcc on Instagram. That’s where we put out all the information when the time comes on how to apply and how to get involved with the Black History Month Planning Committee.

In addition to that, at the link in the bio and the Linktree, there’s an opportunity to sign up for the Multicultural Student Center’s newsletter, and you can select by the cultural center. So you can choose the Black Cultural Center, the Latine Cultural Center, APIDA, MENA, the ISC, all of the cultural centers in there, you can check boxes just to see, because you don’t have to only get involved with our heritage month, but all the heritage months are opportunities.

Anything else you want to mention?

Come out to the Black History Month Planning Committee’s events! Our first event kicks off Sunday, Feb. 1, so we definitely hit the ground running this month. The following event is health and wellness pilates on the 4th, which I believe is a Wednesday.

That event is strictly pre-registered, so you do have to register for it. We encourage everyone to register for all of our events, just so that we get a head count and have those numbers for logistical reasons. But I will say the health and wellness pilates class is registration-only because we have a hard limit, so definitely get those in as soon as possible.

Black History Month website: https://students.wisc.edu/black-history/