Naudin King, 18, (left) and Aldo Jesus, 18, hold on to each other for support while skating around the rink at the second annual Black Student Association Roller Rink Extravaganza.
By Amy Diaz
The USF St. Petersburg Black Student Association let the good times roll Thursday with the Annual Roller Rink Extravaganza.
The event, which is only in its second year, drew more than 50 diverse students to participate.
The BSA is dedicated to promoting black cultural appreciation and awareness of issues that affect black students. A collaborative effort and some creative thinking led the group to the idea of a roller-skating night.
“Last year it was a success. We even had students from USF Tampa come to our event,” said BSA President Quintina Killings.
Killings is a senior and a lover of roller-skating.
“We just have a good time and it’s just always happy,” she said. “Even though they bust their butts a couple of times, they still have fun.”
The BSA utilized its budget with students in mind, providing free food, T-shirts, transportation and admission for the first 50 students to sign up.
Before the skating began, Killings held an educational meeting in the Student Life Center to inform students of the impact roller-skating has had on the black community.
“Roller skating was just kind of like that one harmonizing place where they could go. It was like Switzerland for black folks,” she said. “It was a way for them to have fun, go out with their friends, and just forget about all the chaos that they were experiencing from just being black.”
Killings described roller-skating as a form of dance, art and self-expression. She also said the rise of roller-skating led to a decrease in crime and school drop-out rates in some areas, like Detroit and Los Angeles.
“It literally saved lives for black kids,” she said.
But Killings says skating has become a dying art due to roller rinks going out of business, the rise of in-home entertainment and gentrification.
If roller-skating is a dying art, the crowd of students that piled onto a bus headed for Astro Skate in Pinellas Park was ready to revive it.
As students laced up their skates at the rink, Killings jokingly warned everyone not to fall or she would catch it on video. There were a few falls despite this warning, but the students managed to laugh them off and get back up.
USF St. Petersburg freshman Naudin King found comfort in going off campus and getting to know other students.
“I like getting out and doing events like this because I get bored and lonely sometimes,” King said. “There are so many people here and it’s just really enjoyable. And who doesn’t want to go skating?”
Killings will be graduating this year, but she hopes BSA will continue to host this event annually after she is no longer the president.
“I would want this to keep on going because it’s actually made such a positive impact on everybody,” she said. “Not just like me, or black students on campus, but just everybody who comes over here in the Tampa Bay area that wants to join in.”
You can find the Black Student Association on PeteSync to look out for upcoming events.
