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Black Student Presidents Blaze Trails

Leslie Ekpe and Lau’Rent Honeycutt are first to hold their offices.

By TCU Magazine

February 1^st, 2022

by Brandon Kitchin

In a new era of TCU history, Black students now hold the presidential seats in the Student Government Association and Graduate Student Senate. Lau’Rent Honeycutt and Leslie Ekpe are the first to represent the undergraduate and graduate student bodies, respectively.

“This position gives me a bond to all students here,” said Honeycutt, a senior marketing major in the Neeley School of Business from Huntsville, Alabama. “It’s my job to serve them and help make their experience even better.”

“I’m incredibly honored that I get to serve my peers,” said Ekpe, a third-year doctoral student in the higher educational leadership program from Lewisville, Texas. “And I get to support TCU because TCU has poured into me just as much as I have poured into it.”

Being elected as the first Black student presidents, Ekpe and Honeycutt joined a sacred hall of trailblazers in university history.

Alongside them are TCU’s other Black firsts: Vada Felder ’54 MREd, graduate of Brite Divinity School; Allene Jones ’63, bachelor’s degree graduate and professor; Doris Ann McBride Goree ’63, also a bachelor’s degree graduate; Anthony Cregler ’69, Army ROTC member; James Cash ’69, student-athlete at TCU and basketball player in the Southwest Conference; Ronnie Hurdle ’71, cheerleader at TCU and in the Southwest Conference; homecoming queen Jennifer Giddings Brooks ’71 (MS ’74); and homecoming king Yendor Reese ’07.

Ekpe and Honeycutt said they hope they won’t be the last Black student body presidents.

Becoming a Horned Frog

Ekpe faced obstacles on her path to TCU. After garnering two master’s degrees, she spent three years seeking entrance into a doctoral program, struggling to find the right place to continue her education.

Denied entrance to over 10 institutions, a defeated Ekpe was willing to do whatever it took to get into a program, so she applied for another master’s degree at TCU.

“Dr. [Don] Mills ’72 MDiv actually called me and said, ‘Hey, can you come to my office? I’d love to meet you,’ ” she said. “I come to his office, and the first thing he tells me is that he’s not going to admit me. I just drove out here to get another rejection, but little did I know it was a blessing in disguise.”

During a tearful office visit, Mills informed Ekpe that he was transferring her master’s application to the doctoral program.

“TCU chose me,” she said.

“Leslie is a remarkable person,” said Mills, distinguished professor of educational leadership. “She’s smart; she’s got a great personality; she’s not afraid to take on any responsibilities or any task.”

Inspired by her challenging journey to doctoral studies, Ekpe said her dissertation intends “to highlight the need for universities to critically examine admissions policies such as standardized testing that have historically excluded students of color.”

Leslie Ekpe is the first Black president of the Graduate Student Senate. Photo by Vishal Malhotra

Upon graduation, she aspires to join the ranks of tenured faculty in American higher education.

Honeycutt said that joining the TCU community was not his original plan, as he sort of stumbled onto campus when looking at other North Texas colleges. “It’s funny how life just changes like that.”

He almost transferred after his first year at TCU. “I didn’t feel in tune to campus or to the community I had,” he said. “I wanted to give up.”

Instead, Honeycutt, who would like to become a leader in the television industry, got involved in various student activities. “There was a reason I was at this school,” Honeycutt recalled telling himself. “I have to just give it my all, because if not, what am I doing?”

Commitment to Service

Before the end of his first year on campus, Honeycutt was serving in student government as the Class of 2022 representative and student experience chairman, and on the diversity, equity and inclusion and the student outreach committees. His work allowed him to support student organizations and coordinate large-scale programming, including social events and resource fairs.

He said he still didn’t feel as if his voice were being taken seriously. “People were not exactly listening to me, and they’re not taking my point of view. So if I want to actually make a difference on campus, I’m going to need to have a power seat, and so that influenced why I ran for president.”

Honeycutt relied on social media during his presidential campaign. He also met with TCU Football student-athletes, volunteered in the community and collected character testimonials from fellow students. His campaign platform, “Let’s Do More,” challenged TCU students to “want to see change across campus … to help all students.”

Honeycutt doubled his efforts during election week, calling the experience hectic and exhausting. He was asleep on the evening of April 16, 2021, when results were announced.

“An hour before I would have gotten the phone call [that he won], I was like, ‘I have to rest my eyes for a few minutes,’ and I ended up napping for two hours.”

A phone call from student vice president-elect Catherine Cunningham woke him with the news he had won with 61 percent of the vote.

Honeycutt’s goals for the role include making textbooks more affordable, establishing financial literacy programs and helping the university analyze how it markets itself to prospective students from historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.

By helping audit TCU Admissions’ marketing materials, Honeycutt said, he hopes to better understand how the university is represented in those communities. He said that any attempt to alter the perception of TCU in the outside community must start on campus.

The university’s push toward diversity, equity and inclusion won’t be successful, he said, “unless we have more diverse students here.”

“My goal is to go around to local schools with other student leaders and talk about how amazing TCU is and to give them the resources they want to come here. I want to make sure that TCU is their No. 1 destination after high school.”

Lau’Rent Honeycutt is the first Black person to be president of TCU’s Student Government Association. Photo by Vishal Malhotra

Leading at a Higher Level

Ekpe’s introduction to serving fellow students came through her role as the graduate assistant for TCU’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. During her second year on campus, she got involved with the Graduate Student Senate.

Unlike Honeycutt, Ekpe didn’t need to run for the position. She was elected by the graduate leadership board that preceded her through the recommendation from then-president, Courtney Kimmel. “Courtney added my name and believed in my ability to be successful in the position.”

As president, Ekpe is focusing on increasing the visibility and amplifying the voices of graduate students.

“TCU is 85 percent undergraduate and 15 percent graduate students,” Ekpe said. “Without the 15 percent, you still don’t have TCU. We have to remember that 15 percent holds a lot of weight. No university walks around 85 percent. We walk around 100 percent.”

She said graduate students are essential to the success of higher education.

“If we want to sustain higher education, [it] involves graduate students,” she said. “We do the research and teaching, and we are the people that come back into the academic realm and academia to serve the institution, whether that’s through student affairs or academic affairs.”

Ekpe said her strategy of bringing graduate students together and encouraging them to voice their concerns is starting to generate results.

“I am the voice of many, but I’m not the voice of all,” she said. “I know I’m the president, but I never want to be the smartest person in the room, and I honestly believe that I’m only as good as the people around me.”

Ekpe is intentional about bringing other graduate students into meetings with key stakeholders. “I want them to be there because they have a perspective that I don’t have,” she said. “Fortunately, I surrounded myself with a bunch of people that know a lot about their respective fields. Do you know how powerful that is?”

Serving at the same time has enhanced the experience, Honeycutt said. “Having that automatic connection and shared mission of what we can do for the betterment of TCU has really been amazing.” Photo by Vishal Malhotra

Breaking Barriers

Ekpe and Honeycutt said they are aware of the significance of being the first Black presidents. The historic moment comes as TCU approaches its sesquicentennial in 2023.

“Being able to say we’re both African Americans sitting in this position — and as we are looking to become 150 years old as a university — we literally look at each other and say, ‘How far have we come?’ ” Ekpe said. “What does this look like for the person after? But please, let’s not forget the people before us. … We may be the firsts, but I promise you, we weren’t the first to think about running.”

Ekpe said opportunity is all that separates her from the countless Black TCU students who preceded her.

“There are people that came before me that did amazing work. Why were they not afforded the space to do the things I’m doing now?” Ekpe said. “My goal — and why I’m so honored to be in this position — is because now I take up the space, and I will make sure that the people that come after me don’t have to worry because this space has already been created.”

“There’s no easy path to get to be one of the first,” Honeycutt said. “The first comes with the onslaught of obstacles and pressures, and the only thing that you can really count on is sticking true to what you’ve been told through your years and what that means for the future.”

He said he hopes he can spark the cultural shift the student government needs to hold space for a more diverse body of representatives.

“I would say that people are hopeful and happy, but I think that there is still a long way to go when it comes to the Student Government Association,” he said.

Honeycutt said he hopes to be a campus bridge-builder for communities that historically have self-segregated based on identities or beliefs. “There’s going to be silos,” he said, “and just trying to break down those walls requires connecting students.”

Ekpe said her aim is to move past having firsts 149 years into TCU history.

“To say the ‘first Black’ means we have a lot of work to do. I’m honored to be that — and I do not take it for granted — but I posed this question at the beginning of the year and I said: ‘TCU, what does it mean to you that I’m your first Black president?’ ”

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