Rokiyah Darbo and Qaí Hinds, two Spelman College seniors, have had to give up their quest to officially revive the college’s Muslim student association, An-Nisa, before they graduate in May.
Following Capital B Atlanta’s recent reporting on the obstacles An-Nisa have faced in becoming a registered student organization, Spelman is conducting an internal review to determine which groups are still active.
While the college’s review is ongoing, the application process for new organizations will be closed to all student groups. Hinds said they were told by Spelman the application process would reopen in 2027, meaning if An-Nisa were accepted, it would become an RSO in the 2028-2029 school year.
“It does break my heart,” Darbo told Capital B Atlanta. “I genuinely thought that this year was going to be the one where our MSA [returned].”
An-Nisa had been active on Spelman’s campus with an RSO for a number of years; it became inactive during the 2020-2021 school year when the college went remote due to the COVID pandemic. Because the group had been inactive for more than two years, it had to submit a new application instead of just reactivating the group.
Since Capital B Atlanta’s reporting on their current challenges in reactivating the club, Darbo said she and Hinds have received an outpouring of support from alums who were members of An-Nisa, former students, and current professors in the religious studies program.
One alum who identified herself as a former president of An-Nisa commented, “We know better and should do better.” Another commenter who identified herself as a faculty member said, “Come see me in Giles [Hall] so I can assist and advocate.”
Darbo said the response has been incredible.
“We feel seen by our community, and it feels really nice to meet this many alums,” Darbo said. “They’ve been telling us a lot about their experiences with An-Nisa in the past and how prominent it used to be on Spelman’s campus.”
She and Hinds are now focused on doing what they can to set up An-Nisa for future success, even though they won’t be on campus to see it. They’ve selected three students from their current executive board to serve as co-presidents and vice president next year and have accepted applications from freshmen who want to serve in the other positions.
Darbo said one of the most frustrating parts of this entire experience was feeling misled by Spelman and the staff who lead the Sisters Chapel, the center of religious life on campus.
“An-Nisa’s RSO application for the current academic year was denied because it was submitted after the deadline. Student organizations were offered the opportunity to submit an RSO appeal application by July 21, 2025. An-Nisa did not submit an appeal application,” Spelman said in a statement to Capital B Atlanta.
Darbo and Hinds, however, have a different recollection of how the situation was handled. Darbo said the Rev. Neichelle Guidry, dean of the Sisters Chapel, “stepped in and said that she said that she’s going to go ahead and do [the application] for us to make sure that everything is done correctly.” So when the application was denied, she and Hinds said, they felt blindsided.
“We have all of the documentation that you and Rokiyah provided and I want to re-submit them on your behalf during this renewal window. I want to be 100% certain that we follow all requested steps to ensure an approval for next year,” Guidry wrote to Hinds in a March 2025 email.
Capital B Atlanta reached out to Guidry, who directed the request to Spelman’s division of communications and external affairs.
“Before the summer started, Qai and I were so excited,” Darbo said. They had already begun planning activities and created a calendar of events that they planned to execute once they had RSO status. The RSO would allow the An-Nisa to apply for funds and reserve on-campus space for events. It also would have allowed them to post their events on the monthly activities calendar the school creates.
“For all of that to fall through was just heartbreaking, but we made the best with what we had,” Darbo said.
While Spelman’s statement said the group’s RSO application was denied because it was submitted after the deadline, an email from the Office of Student Life and Engagement sent on July 1, 2025, stated that the office wasn’t accepting any RSO applications for the 2025-2026 school year.
“Whether you’re Jewish, Muslim, Christian, just spiritual, even atheist, their mission says that all spiritual journeys are to be supported and elevated through Sisters Chapel and through the Wisdom Center, and that is something that’s not done,” Hinds said.
A week later, on July 7, An-Nisa’s faculty adviser Sallie Burns, who is program coordinator and assistant to the dean of Sisters Chapel, resigned from the group. In her email stepping down, Burns cited grievances that Hinds and Darbo brought up in a meeting with the student government association around the group’s inability to book spaces for on-campus events and feeling like their needs weren’t a priority.
“Open communication is essential to any effective partnership. When grievances are aired publicly without giving us the opportunity to address them directly it creates an environment that makes it difficult for our staff to work effectively with colleagues across campus. For any advising relationship to success, there must be mutual trust and transparency,” Burns wrote.
Hinds said she got the impression that Burns felt like they had gone over her head.
“It was shocking to me that she was upset that we opened up to SGA when SGA was the one who invited us and asked these questions,” Darbo said.
Capital B Atlanta attempted to reach Burns for comment and was directed to Spelman’s public relations office, which declined to comment.
Spelman was founded as Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary in 1881, but today the college maintains no official religious affiliation.
“As it has over the past four years, Sisters Chapel will continue to work closely with the students and their faculty advisor to provide advocacy, space, and partnership in their campus initiatives. The well-being, inclusion, and cultural enrichment of our students remain central to Spelman’s mission and priorities,” Spelman College said in a statement to Capital B Atlanta.
Despite the obstacles, Darbo said she doesn’t want to discourage Muslim girls from coming to Spelman.
“Some of the sisters that I met at the MSA in Spelman have been the best friends that I have,” Darbo said. “At the end of the day it’s better to use your voice to make a change, and we come to Spelman as a way of making change for the future.”
She is optimistic that the MSA will be better positioned for future Muslim Spelmanites and that the community she and Hinds have revived on campus will continue to thrive.
“If they do experience the things that we experienced, even as an alum, I will be standing right beside them.”
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