For Us By Us, commonly known as F.U.B.U. is an organization dedicated to providing Black women on Northwestern’s campus with the opportunity to explore their Black womanhood, in the comfort of other black women.

The programming is intended to help black women on campus  meet, and begin to form relationships with, one another. The club also aims to provide a space for black women to discuss topics most pertinent to them, one where these womxn feel visible, seen and heard.. According to Amira Richards, junior and coordinator of F.U.B.U., having student-run organizations such as theirs help  eliminate some of the feelings of alienation that might come with being a black woman on a predominately white campus.

“I know from experience that this is the kind of space that I would want as a freshman,” said Richards. “I think having one of the most marginalized identities and being kind’ve attacked from all angles [makes it] important for students who identify as black women to have a space to come together.”

Many black women, including first-year and Events Co-chair Rachel Okine, have benefitted from F.U.B.U. in the ways that Richards had hoped.

“It’s a space where we’re all safe and we can all give our own opinions,” said Okine. “We don’t have to worry about being attacked or made fun of.”

Given the recent backlash by the Northwestern community over the arrival of Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist and intelligence researcher from Britain who is   spending a year-long sabbatical from The London School of Economics and Political Science, according to the Change.com petition to remove him– the petitioned has garnered 5,287 of 7,500 desired signatures. He has published articles such as “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women,” on Northwestern’s campus, and many students are looking to student organizations to facilitate dialogue on such pressing issues. F.U.B.U. aims to comfortably fill this role, and to take the necessary steps to provide Black women with a platform to speak on their experiences at a university that has previously been accused of trying to silence or pacify its marginalized students.

F.U.B.U. will begin their bi-weekly community round table discussions, known as Tea Time, on Thursday, January 31st in the Multi-Cultural Center at 6 pm. The executive board hopes that these Tea Times will be spaces of healing and self-care practices, providing black women with the kind of support that the organization was founded on. F.U.B.U strongly encourages black students who identify as womxn to attend.