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Poet and Ted Talk speaker visits Findlay
By Alexis Mitchell
@alexis_mitch14
The University of Findlay continued its tradition of holding a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. event on Jan. 20. This year, UF featured poet and Ted Talk speaker Wilson Okello.
Not only did Okello present to the UF masses that night in Winebrenner Theological Seminary, he spent the day visiting with students in their classrooms, leading discussions, and lunching with students.
Okello spoke, performed spoken word poetry, and also featured a video of students answering the question “What does Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech mean to you?”
Okello believes that King’s dedication and persistence in the civil rights movement are qualities that everyone should strive for today.
He said that he specifically admires King’s, “…deep questioning, and his willingness to be unapologetic and his stance on equity and justice,” said Okello
Katie Ahrns, a student who attended, thought that Okello’s talk was interesting and thought provoking.
“At the beginning he said that ‘I hope whenever I have children that their heart is irregular.’ So that stood out to me, by that I think he meant that he hopes that the children of our future will not be as it was in the past, they will not have these barriers up that are separating people,” Ahrns said
Okello also mentioned three questions to ask yourself: “What do you want, what power do you have, and what changes are you willing to make?” He believes that this is what people are capable of.
“When I think about that, it’s always being in tips about what we want, about what we have, what we can use to reach that end goal and then what are we willing to give up because inevitably we are going to have to let some things go,” Okello said
Some example of things we can let go of to reach success according to Okello is fear, passivity, shame, and just whatever it is you have to let go of to move forward.
After the program everyone picked up a candle and walked together to the front of Old Main to celebrate King’s life society’s progress.
“From Martin Luther King, I think that everyone should definitely realize that we’re all people, and that what color our skin is or what we look like, our physical appearance does not matter,” Ahrns said
