Since last April, Torrell Foree has held the position as coordinator of the African American Resource Center.
As students come to the center, he noticed that they tend to gravitate towards the black student welcomes and film discussions. Especially being in Orange County, where there are not many black students.
Bethany Whittaker, a senior communications lead for the center, said that the center focuses on making sure the student comes first.
The center ensures that each student is provided with resources where they can feel that they are excelling academically as a black student on campus, Whittaker said.
Foree said that the center consistently collaborates with other resource centers on campus to help students that have multiple identities and plan events with along with them. One of his goals is to plan upcoming events with other coordinators from the other resource centers. The center currently has events planned with the Chicana and Chicano Resource Center as well as the Asian Pacific American Resource Center.
Foree said it’s better that now all of the resource centers are located in the same area and that students are able to define what they want for themselves.
“Students can move in and out of centers to explore their identities and to explore their communities. To me, that’s dope to see that I don’t have to stick to one place,” he said. “You don’t have to be boxed into any particular identity. You get to define what that is for yourself.”
Foree gave three pieces of advice for African American students at Cal State Fullerton struggling with identity issues.
First, he suggests that the center is a place where they will find people that look like themselves. Second, he wants to them to find their community because their community will hold them down and will always be there for them. Third, for them to explore.
“If I limited how I viewed myself every day; how others define me, I wouldn’t be here. It was because I took the opportunity to explore,” he said. “Be open to everything.”
Foree himself was a student at CSUF and earned his undergraduate degree in history and African American studies as a double major and a Master’s Degree focused in higher education in 2016.
“At that time, I had equated blackness with struggling. The struggle was like your authenticator of how black you are. I didn’t have a lot of cultural experiences that you would tag me as black,” Foree said.
Foree said he was struggling to give meaning to his racial identity, which further emphasized his identity issues.
He got involved in his community by reading black literature and learned more about black culture which helped him define himself.
He said growing up, black culture was not overtly presented to him and remembered seeing pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., but never knew who they were until he got to college.
Foree said he now admires Malcolm X after reading his autobiography.
“The way that he spoke, the words that he used, he always spoke truth to power. And when I read that book, it sort of lit a fire in me that made me feel confident in who I am,” he said.
Foree still enforces the notion of speaking “truth to power” as he advocates for black students.
In college, Foree joined the center, Alliance for the Preservation of African Consciousness and Afro-Ethnic Student Association to surround himself with other black men.
The new coordinator said that his college experience of searching for his identity allowed him to “explore black culture on a whole different level.”
Foree said he knew he wanted to do a job that he was passionate about. It was conflicting at first because he felt that it would be weird to go back to his alma mater. When the position to be coordinator for the center opened up, he immediately knew that it was meant to be. It was everything he had been building towards.
Now as a staff member, Foree interacts with this new generation of students that he describes as hungry. He knows that these students are hungry for change, and they want this to be a vibrant place.
He said he was originally going to become a professor, and hopes that one day, he eventually will.
Foree said that CSUF stands out to him and he encourages students to always ask for help.
“It’s my alma mater. I care about black students everywhere, but this is home, it just means more to me,” he said.
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