Briana Hemphill embodies the characteristics of Temple students that make us among the most respected collegiate in the city: passion, persistence, strength and intelligence.
A transfer student from George Mason University, Hemphill, 21, arrived on Main Campus in the spring of 2012. She soon found her experience at Temple University would be starkly different from her time in Virginia on George Mason’s campus. “[George Mason] was another school that said it was diverse but wasn’t really…I needed to be somewhere where there were things around…I came to Temple and it was amazing and I loved it! Everybody was so sweet and kind to me and so passionate….I don’t regret not coming sooner because I feel I had to go to the other school to find myself,” Hemphill said.
One of the ways Hemphill, a Media Advertising major and Women’s Studies minor, found herself was by implementing her passions into multiple student organizations throughout campus.
After familiarizing herself with Temple’s Progressive National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) during a student organizations fair, Hemphill was immediately drawn to the organization and its mission. “I was annoyingly outgoing,” Hemphill laughs. But her outgoingness is what led her to play the Jeopardy game they were hosting at the org fair and learn more about the student run organization. Since then, she’d attended every meeting held by Temple’s NAACP. In her junior year, she became the Juvenile Justice Chair for the organization where she worked to ensure just treatment for juvenile offenders and raise awareness about the state of incarcerated youth in Philadelphia.
Now a senior and as 2nd Vice President for Temple’s NAACP, Hemphill juggles multiple organizational and administrative tasks for the organization that played a crucial role in uniting students in protest this past November and December following grand jury decisions not to indict the police offers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In addition to orchestrating multiple demonstrations and collaborating with other organizations in response to the jury decisions, Temple’s NAACP also held the event, Blackout Vigil: Flight for the Fallen to pay respects to the deaths not just of Brown and Garner, but the innumerable lives lost to police brutality. “A lot of times when things like this happen, we don’t take time to acknowledge lives were lost…people are dying we have to remember them as people,” said Hemphill.
Members of multiple student organizations such as The Black Student Union, Temple Association of Black Journalists and Queer People of Color co-hosted the evening event at the Bell Tower in which participants dressed in all black attire and black balloons were used to symbolize the lives lost.
In addition to her work with Temple’s NAACP, Hemphill is also a Resident Assistant at Temple Towers. “I wanted to make somebody’s transition easier because I had an awesome RA my freshmen year…RA’s can make or break your time here,” she said.
Temple’s Residence Hall Association and NAACP aren’t the only organizations on campus to be graced with Hemphill’s talents. She’s also co-host a show at WHIP radio titled The Corner on Saturday mornings with co-hosts Melanie McCoy and producer, Jada Dale where they discuss issues affecting the black community, a dialogue Hemphill is ardent in continuing. “It’s something that I can’t stop talking about so I’m going to keep talking about it. It’s a life or death situation, literally,” she emphasizes.