The Black Student Union (BSU) hosted Spades Night on Feb. 4 in Doyle Banquet Hall South, where St. Joe’s students were welcomed to gather and learn how to play the card game. About 20 students attended the event.

Commonly played with four players, where players sitting across from each other are partners, the objective is to win as many tricks as possible between partners.

As players place cards down facing up in a clockwise order, the player with the highest card wins the set, unless someone puts a spade down: the spade trumps all.

“Spades is popular in the Black community more to older generations than to my generation,” said Donavin Gomez ’24, a member of BSU, who planned the event. “I was like, ‘Let’s teach people how to play spades because, actually, nowadays a lot of people don’t know how to play spades.’ It was to get people back into something that’s popular in the community.”

The goal of hosting activities like Spades Night is for students to enjoy a casual social event while having insightful conversations with those in their community, Gomez said.

“The goal with a lot of these is not really to teach but to get the community involved,” Gomez said. “We want to get as many people of color together to interact, to mingle, to meet their group.”

Sophia Pringle ’23, who serves on the BSU’s executive board, said learning the game gave her the opportunity to further immerse herself in her culture. “It’s something that’s definitely a part of
our culture that I just was never really introduced to before,” Pringle said. “Me and my family usually play cards but we just never play spades, so it was fun to come out.”

Students who are not members of the club, like Kaylee Lynch ’24, also attended. Lynch enjoyed playing cards with her friends and hopes to continue to attend more of the BSU’s events in the future.

“This was the first time I attended an event, but it was awesome, and I hope they do more of these,” Lynch said.

Alyvia Benson ’22, BSU president, said that Black History Month is a time for Black students, along with other students of color, to come together and celebrate Black culture.

“It’s really just to bring us together to celebrate all things that are Black, whether that’s card games, or movies, or art or history or whatever,” Benson said. “It is to kind of move away from all of the Black trauma that we see within social media [and] move more into the celebration of Black people as a whole.”