After arriving at Elon University from West Bloomfield, Michigan, Benji Stern (Elon, 2026) was not sure whether fraternity life would become part of his college story. His best friend and roommate, Simon Mendelson, helped change that.

The two met before freshman year through mutual friends, FaceTimed for an hour and decided they could live together. They remained roommates all four years. Simon also encouraged Benji to rush Alpha Epsilon Pi.

Benji brought along a good-luck charm: a Tasmanian Devil hat his sister had given him. It became his “rush hat,” and then a small piece of Elon AEPi lore. More importantly, he found brothers who made him feel at home.

“The guys that I met were amazing,” Benji said. “Judaism’s a huge part of my life, so it was perfect.”

Benji recently graduated from Elon, where he studied journalism, not because he planned to be a reporter, but because he wanted to hone his communication skills. Later this summer, he will bring those skills to Brandeis University Hillel as a Springboard Fellow focused on engagement.

At Elon, Benji’s leadership roles often overlapped. He served AEPi as brother-at-large, planning Parents Weekend, brotherhood events and coordinating with Hillel. He later became Hillel president. But the work he describes as the most meaningful of his college career grew from another Elon experience: a civil rights trip through Alabama.

During his sophomore year, Benji traveled with a diverse cohort of students to Selma and Birmingham, Alabama to visit the 16th Street Baptist Church, the Rosa Parks Museum and the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The trip was part of the Isabella Cannon Leadership Fellows program, called Disarming Injustice and served to sharpen something Benji had been thinking about already: Elon had a thriving Black community and a thriving Jewish community, but they were too often operating separately.

Along with a student partner, Benji began building Elon’s Black-Jewish Coalition. He met campus leaders, learned about coalition building and found advisors, including Elon Hillel Director Betsy Polk and Rev. Kirstin Boswell, the university chaplain and dean of multifaith engagement. The coalition’s mission is to bring together two historically connected yet often separate communities through dialogue, shared experiences, and collaborative action. Beginning with a small, intentional cohort in Fall 2025, the coalition fostered meaningful relationships through discussions, community programs, and social events. Ultimately, the project aims to build lasting cross-community understanding, equip students with coalition-building skills and create a sustainable model for unity and advocacy at Elon.

The coalition launched during Benji’s senior year. Its foundation was simple but powerful: sustained relationships. Not just a one-time Shabbat, panel or cookout, but repeated opportunities for students to know each other as people.

Most Sunday nights, the group gathered for dinner.

That part mattered.

“It was really good food,” Benji said, laughing. The first 15 or 20 minutes were intentionally informal: eating, talking and catching up. Then the group moved into deeper conversations about identity, community, history and belonging. They discussed political and religious diversity within the Jewish community and a wide range of Black student experiences.

The group also hosted community-facing programs. Students attended a hockey game together, held a Shabbat with “speech schmoozing,” showed a documentary — Shared Legacies — and joined a dinner at North Carolina A&T with UNCF, Hillel and the Blue Square Alliance.

For Benji, the goal was never symbolic friendship. It was culture change.

“In a world where there’s a rise of antisemitism, a rise of racism, a rise of polarization in general, we wanted to create a model for unity on our campus,” he said.

That unity also led to advocacy. By the end of the year, Benji and another student leader sat together with a university vice president to discuss issues facing both communities, including culturally appropriate food, event funding and security for the Hillel house.

The work was not always easy. Benji said one challenge was helping students understand why Black-Jewish partnership matters, including the powerful but imperfect history of cooperation during the Civil Rights Movement. “We were really focused on finding common ground and some of the harder and more nuanced stuff – like discussing Israel – is going to take more time,” said Benji. Trust takes longer than a semester.

Still, the coalition is set up to continue after his graduation. New Hillel and Black Student Union leaders are preparing to carry it forward, and Benji hopes Elon can become a model for other campuses, including Brandeis.

His commitment is also personal. His mother, Rabbi Marla Hornsten of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, co-chairs the Black Jewish Coalition in Detroit. Benji was recently one of 10 student leaders from around the county who was invited to attend a national Black-Jewish relations conference in Miami and he joined his mother there, meeting leaders doing similar bridge-building work.

That work was especially poignant given the recent terror attack at Temple Israel. “That’s my synagogue. I went to kindergarten there. My mother is dealing with that reality every single day and she still took the time to go to Miami and offer support for other people and also to be able to stand up in front of that group and discuss real and dangerous antisemitism.”

On Juneteenth, as we reflect on freedom, history and the ongoing struggle for justice for all communities, Benji’s story offers a timely reminder. Relationships do not erase differences. They create the trust needed to face difference honestly. And sometimes, the first step toward a stronger campus community begins with AEPi brothers, Hillel leaders, Black student leaders and a really good Sunday dinner.

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