Payton Head gave a speech at SUNY Cortland late October. He is a recent graduate from the University of Missouri. He studied many things at his time there including journalism, political science and balk studies. He was student body president and represented about 28,000 students. Payton talked about improving race relationship on campuses and working to create institutional change.

To say the speech by Payton Head was inspiring would be an understatement. I was fully invested during his presentation and was sad when it was over. His speech was called “Lessons From Mizzou,” and was all about racism that he has experienced and what his actions have done and what has been impacted. Payton Head went to The University Of Missouri, where he was involved in the journalism program. He grew up in downtown Chicago where the majority of the town is black, so coming to Mizzou was different because the school is 77% white. He left his mark at the school and really got involved. He was homecoming king, president of the student government and was involve in a lot clubs. He strived to be the best at everything. But not all of his experiences were positive.

Payton experienced racism many times while on campus and outside. He was called many racial and sexual slurs while walking down the road holding his boyfriends hand. After being harassed one time, he took his anger out on the internet. He ranted on Facebook, and was extremely surprised when he woke up the thousands of shares and comments and calls from NY Times. He found out that unfortunately, he was not alone involving this problem. The school erupted with this and protests started to break out. The school was tense and everyone was waiting for the president of the school to respond to the events, but he wouldn’t. This caused stressful times at his college and it only become more stressful when a tragic event happened, the Ferguson shooting. In Missouri, a black man, who was unarmed, was shot by a white police officer twelve times. This started a huge movement called “Black Lives Matter.”

The town of Missouri was taken over by protests during this time, as well as Mizzou college. Students skipped class to protest on campus and Payton seemed to be in charge of it all. News reporters flooded Ferguson and Mizzou to get footage of this life changing time. A student that was friends with Payton went on a six-day hunger strike because the president of the school was not putting a statement out about recent events. Payton had a meeting with Tim, the president and he had to power to help that person, but he did nothing. Everyone wanted him to resign. Tim even put the sprinklers on during one of the protests. At another protest, they held the student on a hunger strike up so he could be involved, he was extremely weak. Payton Head’s speech was very empowering to listen to. He wants everyone who is different race or gender just to be equal.

Payton’s speech was so empowering and really got me thinking. His speech made me want to be involved on my campus and educate myself more on social issues. He was very passionate in the way he spoke and his experiences made the audience sad and empowered at the same time. His humorous comments made the speech more enjoyable and not too serious, although the topic was extremely serious. I learned a lot from Payton and it is a speech that I will remember for a long time.