October 25, 2024
Access & Affordability
Building a tight-knit community one haircut at a time
Georgetown’s Campus Ministry recently highlighted its Chop It Up events, a series of barbershop programs that provide Black students with a convenient place to get a great haircut and build community. The idea of an on-campus barbershop event started when Black male students began asking Chaplain Rev. TauVaughn Toney, affectionately known as Rev T., about his barbershop. He realized that those students had been unable to find good quality barbers nearby and were taking Ubers across town, often paying more for transportation than for the haircut itself.
“We said, ‘Let’s see if we can bring some barbers to campus and gather students together and get your hair cut,’” says Rev. T. “It’s grown into this community of students who have built friendships and gotten to know each other over this last year, and it’s been really beautiful to see, all through getting the haircut and having conversations.”
Convenience and camaraderie
The barbershop—made famous in movies such as Barbershop and Coming to America—has been a cultural hub for Black men throughout history to connect, clean up their style, and to speak freely in a friendly, nonjudgmental space. With the support of the Black Interfaith Fellowship and the Cookout retreat team, Rev. T launched Chop It Up last fall to ensure students had a similar space for themselves on campus that offered good food, free haircuts, music, and easy-going conversations. Around 15-20 students attended Chop It Up’s inaugural Fall 2023 event. A word-of-mouth campaign boosted attendance for the Spring 2024 event, which attracted around 40 attendees, and organizers hope this fall’s forthcoming Chop It Up events will draw even more participants.
Like many Chop It Up attendees, BJ Little (C’27) heard about the events from a friend who attended the Cookout retreat, a Campus Ministry-sponsored overnight retreat created by and for Black students. He attended Chop It Up last fall to get a haircut before Thanksgiving and afterward knew he wanted to get involved.
“[I] loved the work that they were doing, bringing Black students together, cultivating that sense of community, while we’re leaving looking like really good, really handsome men. You also feel like you’ve been heard,” says Little. “Georgetown is a [predominantly-white institution], so sometimes you feel like you can’t really say certain things in certain spaces. So it was very important to us that we did have that space where we could curate a safe environment based on similarity and likeness.”
Even without any online presence or promotion, Chop It Up has grown in popularity as an opportunity for students to unwind, laugh, give advice, and speak about their experiences as Black men on campus and in the world.
“That’s been one of my favorite, most heartening things to see—how these men and this group have grown. They all know each other, have built this tight-knit group, [and] that’s been really cool,” says Rev. T. “Going forward, you want to keep it intimate and to continue building that community. But also, I think it’s going to be inevitable that it continues to grow as the word spreads.”