Students and staff gathered in Careers 129 for the first Black History Month event on Monday.

The Stereotype Threat Workshop, held by AACC’s Black Male Institute, created a safe space to help discover how your snap judgments can affect your relationships academically and professionally. 

“I [want] to be more conscious of how I see people,” Christopher Robinson, a second-year transfer studies student, said. “And not just go by my own preconceived notion of who/what I think they are.”

The event was hosted by Antoine Tomlin, an associate professor at AACC, and Kenneth Gillard, the director of the BMI. Tomlin posed numerous questions to the group designed to help identify some of the assumptions they make about people they meet for the first time.

“A snap judgement, [is] one small piece of the puzzle right,” Tomlin said. “It’s … our due diligence to take as much time as we can to collect the information, to make the most informed decision.”

Tomlin had the attendees turn to their table partners and ask questions like ‘what was the most meaningful gift you’ve ever received?’ Afterwards he then asked them to reflect on what their partner’s answers said about their identity. 

“The whole event was interesting,” Harry Ledford, a first-year social work student, said. “Getting to know each other on a deeper level, we kind of combated those stereotypes that we might have formed if we just got to know [their] surface level identity.”

The event was catered by Chick-Fil-A. They offered nuggets, kale salad, fruit salad and Mac and Cheese. 

“I mainly come for the food,” Robinson said. “But I stayed for the topic.”