Group Student Support program celebrates 40 years

Throughout the past 40 years, the Groups Student Support program has evolved, providing a helping hand to students whose college careers were uncertain because of finances, disabilities or family background.

GSS has been helping underprivileged students on campus since 1968. Serving about 10,000 students, past Groups members gathered together at the Indiana Memorial Union to celebrate 40 years of the program on Saturday.

“We’re celebrating 40 years of our existence, and we’re talking 40 years of helping first-generation, low-income students attend Indiana University,” said Director of GSS Janice Wiggins. “We’re proud of what we’re doing. A college experience is where it all begins.”

GSS enables disadvantaged students who, without assistance of GSS, would be unable to pay for college. Students who are told about GSS or recommended by their school counselor can apply to become a member. This application, if accepted, can change a life, members said.

Tracie Greer, a Group ’93 member, said without GSS she would never have gone to college.

“My mother actually said to me ‘Why do you want to go to college? Why don’t you just get a good job at a factory?’ because in her mind, that was what was good,” Greer said. “But I didn’t want a job at a factory. When I had the opportunity to go to school, I went to school. I’m glad I went.”

GSS plants the seeds and then watches students grow. Students of the GSS program meet some specific requirements. A new GSS student must attend a summer orientation program in which they take a few classes to help them adjust to college life, and he or she must keep a certain grade point average in order to maintain their place in the GSS program.

Dennis Hayes, CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said at the celebration that he believes throughout the past 40 years GSS has provided a continuing mark of excellence and equality.

“(GSS) has done so much, for so many, for so long, for so little,” Hayes said during his speech. “We are evolving through the best of times and the worst of times.”

A member of Group ’69, Hayes has become an accomplished individual since joining the GSS Program. Many of the GSS participants have become doctors, educators, lawyers, reverends, politicians and businessmen.

Hayes spoke about his first impressions of IU – GSS support that embraces every aspect of the community and the changes in the black community throughout history.

“Other volunteers took on the fight to ensure that the ‘we’ in the Constitution would include all people across racial, ethnic and gender lines,” he said. “There’s a popular story that we all know, and it puts our humanity into context and reminds us how we are not called upon to lead perfectly, but that we are called to a perfect mission. In the end we all need each other to succeed.”