Jordan Bydume keeps her black robe in her closet.
She’ll slip it on for every student hearing, sitting with a faculty member and two other Student Justices listening to students talk about their violations of HPU’s Honor Code.
Bydume, a junior business administration major, knows the Honor Code like the tune from her favorite song. She is Chief Justice of the university’s Judicial Board, an appointed position that makes her a custodian of the school’s ethical compass.
Her work has given her confidence. It’s now given her something else, an HPU award. She has been named Extraordinary Leader for the month of January.
What she does is incredibly important. But how did she get there? That’s the story.
From Adversity Comes Abundance
After a night of cheerleading, Bydume pulled up to her family’s long driveway with her mom and found in the mailbox what she had been waiting for: a letter from High Point University. She had been accepted.
“I knew it was coming!” her mom exclaimed.
Bydume is the youngest daughter of Beverly and DeWayne Bydume. Her parents run a trucking company, and the Bydumes hardly ever take a family vacation.
Now, Bydume was moving to North Carolina to get a degree and become the first in their immediate family to go to college.
Sitting at the end of the driveway, holding the acceptance letter in her hands, Bydume felt numb. HPU was her first choice.
But as moving to campus drew near, Bydume wrestled with what so many freshmen run into generation after generation. Bydume felt anxious about leaving home.
She grew up in Brandywine, a tiny unincorporated community an hour south of Baltimore. She spent 14 years, from pre-K to 12th grade, in Grace Bethren Christian School, and she graduated with 42 other classmates.
She always saw her parents at school. Her mom was a volunteer; her dad was the coach of the middle school basketball team; she was the Eagles’ cheerleader, the grad who earned The Lifer Award with two other students for being at Grace Bethren so long.
But at HPU, her parents were no longer a 30-minute drive away. They were six hours away. They might as well be on the other side of the world.
Ask her about that experience today, and Bydume tears up. But she learned to adapt. She became close to her roommates, dove into her classes and talked to her mom three times a day.
But what really helped was when she applied and became a Student Justice the second semester of her freshman year. She then applied to become a peer mentor because her own peer mentor helped her so much.
Bydume’s anxiousness began to dissipate. She joined the HPU’s Diversity Club and found more friends, more things to do. She felt different. She felt good.
HPU felt like home.
“I’m Just Grateful”
Bydume later became a Hearing Chair in charge of student cases and making sure everything ran smoothly. Then, in April, Student Government President Joshua Gilstrap appointed her as Chief Justice.
She sees the position as a chance to teach, not punish.
“We’re trying to help people make better decisions,” she says. “If we help them now, they’ll be better off in the long run.”
Other than Chief Justice, she is the head of the judicial board that reviews constitutions for new clubs being chartered on campus. As Chief Justice, she is a member of the SGA Executive Council, and she resides over most cases.
She hears at least two cases a week. When she does, she slips on her black robe with the purple embroidery over her heart. It spells her name: J. Bydume.
“I’m just grateful,” she says. “I never thought I’d be this important in such a big setting, but High Point University has awarded me so many opportunities. I’m grateful for everything.”
Bydume is busy between court and her part-time job as an office assistant in the Office of Student Life. Meanwhile, she keeps her anxiousness at bay by mapping out in her day planner her daily schedule with a black Sharpie pen.
“Don’t get worried about it,” she tells herself constantly as she writes big in her book.
She still calls her mom at least twice a day. But she is no longer the anxious freshman. She is the confident junior. Now comes her latest accomplishment: the Extraordinary Leader Award.
“I never imagined in a million years that I’d be talking about this accolade.”
Time to Give Back
After graduation next year, Bydume plans to go to law school and become a corporate lawyer. But she’s also been talking to her father, the entrepreneur, about coming back and working in the family business.
She had watched her dad work two jobs and build a company from one truck with one employee – himself – to 23 trucks and 25 employees. Bydume, the former Eagles cheerleader her dad calls “Jordy,” wants to help.
“It’s a tangible thing,” she says. “They have provided for me for so long, putting me through school, getting a degree and giving me the money so I could go to college. For 21 years, they have helped me. Now, I want to help them.”