Black VT Students Lament School’s Ending Ujima Program

By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide

Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg has officially ended its 7-year-old Ujima program, residence halls that were opened on April 13, 2018 for students who shared academic and personal interests.

Ujima, which has grown from an initial 70 students to 188 students, as of the fall of 2025, closed this fall. Ujima will be dissolved at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. Ujima held get-togethers, celebrations, excursions and testimonials. Members of these living, learning communities (LLC) were informed in September that they would need to find alternative housing options for the upcoming academic year.

“Students currently living in those living learning communities were notified a few weeks back, and the university will continue to share these changes when students sign up for living learning community options later this fall,” university spokesperson Mark Owczarski said in a statement in Collegiate Times.

“I can understand what you’re reading online, but what we’re trying to do is improve residential programs as well as academic programs,” Owczarski later told 10 News.

Virginia Tech officials decided early in the 2025 fall semester that Ujima would be dissolved at the end of the 2025-26 academic year. Three other living-learning communities (LLCs) will be dissolved including Orion, located in New Residence Hall East and centered on science; Rhizome, located in the Creativity and Innovation District and centered on global leadership principles; and Lavender House, located in O’Shaughnessy Hall and centered on LGBTQ+ studies.

When Ujima students learned of the shutdown, Abraham Well, one of 188 Ujima residents, who is a freshman electrical engineering student from Lorton, said, “It was unfair that this community was being taken away when there’s so many different other communities on campus.”

“I know definitely we’ve been talking about having a couple people specifically meet regularly to think and brainstorm about ways we can meet with whatever executives or presidents – whichever council people we need to talk to – to be able to see whatever policies we can reform despite things that might be going up in higher office.”

He said being at Ujima helped him “meet the right friends, meet the right people,” with him “feeling like I’m at home.”

Black Coalition leader Zee Myrthil, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship and minoring in music production, lived in Ujima as a freshman and described it as a key factor in deciding to come to Blacksburg.

“It was a big part of why I came to Virginia Tech,” Myrthil said. “I saw that there is an active Black community on campus that was dedicated to teaching you about your history and placing you in a community with others that look like you, keeping you in a safe space, offering a safe space, and education about your history.”

During the year he spent in Ujima, he often heard that the LLC’s existence was under threat and that residents like him should prepare for when the moment finally came.

“I found out, I think, a week before the Ujima kids found out and I wasn’t necessarily shocked because, ever since my freshman year in Ujima, we’ve been warned that Ujima’s being targeted, that people just think it’s an all-Black dorm,” Myrthil said.

“We were told that we should start preparing for that and start building our own community that isn’t too reliant on the school’s funding or institutional backing and, so, once Ujima was gone, it was a disappointment.”