Flyer courtesy of DU Communications Office
The flyer was sent campus-wide as a reminder to vote during the campaign.
NEW ORLEANS (March 10, 2017) – Miss Dillard Chelsea D. Bosley and four others from Louisiana schools comprise half of the 10 HBCU campus queens that will be featured in the spring/summer 2017 issue of Ebony magazine.
This is the first time Dillard has been featured since the magazine changed the format in 2009 to showcase the Top 10 rather than all 50 queens, according to Dr. Walter Kimbrough, university president, in a news release announcing the vote.
All current HBCU campus queens will be featured in the September 2017 issue, but the Top 10 queens are being featured in the earlier issue, said David Grubb, director of communications and marketing, in a campus email. He said later that he had not been told which month the issue featuring the Top 10 will come out. Calls by the Courtbouillon to Ebony offices were not returned.
Bosley, 21, an English senior from Plaquemine and the 81st Miss Dillard, was selected through a national online voting process that also resulted in queens being featured from four other Louisiana schools: Xavier University, Southern University at Baton Rouge, Southern University at New Orleans and Grambling University.
Bosley said the other five school whose queens will be showcased from outside Louisiana are Florida A&M, Jackson State, South Carolina State University, Mississippi Valley and Albany State universities.
Bosley earned a trip to New York for the photo shoot, but she said the dates for the trip have not been announced. She said that in the interim, each queen has been asked to designate a public relations team, and the queens were invited to the Essence Super Bowl party; she said she couldn’t attend because of a prior commitment.
She said she expects a benefit to her upcoming New York trip, her first to the city, will be the opportunity to showcase “the excellence of Dillard University and make some prominent connections with people who can promote our brand.”
Over the course of December and January, Dillard University faculty, staff, students and community cast votes up to three times a day each to get Bosley into the magazine feature, with regular reminders from the Communications Office and President Walter Kimbrough, who wrote to report that three extra voting days had been added to the campaign.
Bosley was reported in sixth place as the voting neared its end, but no ranking of the queens or vote tally has been released.
Of her selection, Bosley said, “It’s not a reflection of me, but of everyone who voted, shared the flyers and made sure our university is showcased on a national level.”
Bosley, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority who has served the past four years on Dillard’s royal court, has earned a 3.8 cumulative grade-point average and logged more than 300 community service hours. She attributes her ability to get it all done to keeping an organized schedule.
She plans to head to law school after her May graduation.
(Kiana Stewart and Mariah Hickman contributed to this report.)