*Editor’s Note: To put this article together I applied my interviewing and networking skills to develop and mantain professional relationships at the event.

Written in ap style

On Wednesday, March 9, the Studnet Alumni Network and Legacy Relations Programs in the KU Alumni Association held the inaugural event for current Jayhawk legacy students. The event, called “Building a Path as a Legacy Student,” did not go as planned. 

A snowstorm was brewing and an hour before the event was scheduled to start, The University of Kansas announced the cancellation of all classes and campus activities for the following day. Out of the more than 4,000 current legacy students at the University of Kansas who were invited, only two showed up. In total, there were seven people at the event. Despite all that, event organizer Annie Miller, Assistant Director of Legacy Relations and Event Services, called the event a “success” saying it provided a great starting point and a real reminder of the community the organizers want to support. 

According to Katherine Hanselman, Vice President of Prospective Student Legacy Recruitment, the goal of the event was to “get in touch with legacy students on campus, connect that community and build out programs and resources and opportunities that are available to them.”

A legacy student is a student that has had one or more parents or grandparents attend KU. A non-traditional legacy student is a student that has had one or more siblings, aunts, uncles, step-parents, or other family members attend KU. According to the KU Office of Analytics, Institutional Research and Effectiveness (AIRE) in the last 10 years, on average, about one-quarter of undergraduate KU students have been legacies. 

“This is a huge community that we want to connect,” Miller said.

KU senior Grace Awbrey is one of the students who attended. Awbrey is a fourth-generation KU legacy student, as her great-grandfather, grandmother, and father all attended the university. For her, being a legacy student wasn’t necessarily a label she wanted to have. 

“I wanted to pave my own way, and do my own thing, and make choices that aren’t related to what my family did,” Awbrey said. “But I realized that being a fourth-generation Jayhawk is not a bad thing, it’s something to be proud of.”

For event organizer Paige Freeman, Director of Student Programs, legacy is complicated.

“You can still have your own identity and follow someone else’s path,” Freeman said. “I think that it’s our responsibility to share with others, this culture, this tradition, this spirit of what does it mean to be a Jayhawk and to encourage people and talk about what makes KU special.” 

For Miller, KU is more than a university. 

“Being a Jayhawk and being a part of something that is so much bigger than oneself here at KU is just something, like, I’ve never experienced before,” Miller said. 

For many Jayhawk students being a part of the community and wearing the Jayhawk emblem on one’s chest is a thing of pride. The network of on-campus resources, Jayhawk success stories, and alumni around the world is one of the major draws into the KU community. “Building a Path as a Legacy Student” aimed at not only bringing students together but also highlighting what makes KU special- the students themselves.  

“I came from different institutions where we had power as students, but we didn’t really have power, student voice was not as powerful. And I think that here at KU, the student’s voice is powerful, and it’s very strong. And so I would say that I’ve just been very proud of the activism that I’ve been able to see from students.” Freeman said. “I think that the reality is that being a Jayhawk looks and feels different for everybody. To see some of our Jayhawks who come from marginalized communities stand up for what needs to shift within the KU culture, I think helps improve us as a whole and… it realigns us with our values.”

In the eyes of the organizers of the event, just because someone isn’t a legacy student, doesn’t make their contribution to the school any less valuable. 

“It’s a way of life, almost, being a Jayhawk and that is not only for legacy students,” Miller said. “From the perspective that I see it anybody on campus, whether or not they are tagged as a legacy student, is building their legacy no matter what.”

While the event did not go as planned, by the end spirits were high.

“This is new and exciting,” Hanselman said. 

 Overall, the event helped the few attendees make more connections at the university and helped foster the importance of legacy student relations. 

“Legacy students can say, ‘Hey, come, welcome, come be a part of this. We want to welcome you here and to help you and so and we want to share this with you.’ And I think that that’s really something unique about legacy students bridging that with non-legacies, especially if the goal is that everybody starts their legacy here,” Miller said. “It’s really powerful.”