Campus Leader Spivey Prepares to Say Goodbye to Wright College

Originally Written April 7, 2025 as part of a news features class at Wilbur Wright College.

“There is no such thing as trying, either you do it or you don’t,” says Tammatha Spivey. “If you put your all into everything, you will succeed. So if you didn’t put your all into everything, you didn’t truly try.” Whether it was getting Wright College students to register to vote, hosting school-wide discussion forums on issues like immigration and DEI, or helping organize Wright’s peer mentorship program, Spivey didn’t just try; she showed she was willing to succeed.

Spivey hosts a voter registration event in September in the Campus Center.

Photo Credit: Kyle Chmielowski.

While Spivey took most of her classes at Harold Washington College, she could participate in any of the seven City Colleges of Chicago as a CCC student. Spivey found a home at Wright College as a part of the Newman Civic Fellowship, a nationwide network of young leaders through the Campus Compact initiative, which promotes campus leaders to be problem solvers.

As a part of the Newman Fellowship, Spivey, with the help of Associate Dean of Instruction Gabe Estill and political science professor Merry Mayer, organized events at Wright aimed at fostering discourse about political issues among students.

One of those events focused on voter registration. As the country grappled with an election season, she was in the campus center promoting voter registration on Wednesdays leading up to the 2024 election. Estill said Spivey’s weekly voter education events were some of her most memorable moments.

“That’s how I’ll remember her, as someone who was out there in the front lines engaging with people,” Estill said.

Spivey also moderated an open mic political discussion forum, a post-election chat, and a deliberative dialogue on immigration, events that demonstrated how Spivey could get the ball rolling when it came to political discussions.

Professor Mayer said, “Her skills in pushing people to discussions, this is coming from a professor, that’s a difficult thing to do to get people to talk and push people a little bit farther in a kind way, to get them to elaborate or maybe think deeper about their positions. She’s really good at that, and for someone so young I think that’s amazing.”

Estill said about Spivey, “She works extremely hard in promoting civic discourse on campus, getting people out there to vote, as well as promoting the public good that higher education does, so getting to know her has just been very inspiring.”

But it’s not just faculty and staff that Spivey inspires. “She’s inspired me to grow as well as help me see that I'm more capable of becoming a leader,” said Bernaliz Lopez, who now considers Spivey a friend. Lopez, who met Spivey at the voter registration events, said, “She knows what she wants to get done and she’ll be able to accomplish it properly.”

Yet for Spivey, it wasn’t always an easy path. She attended 13 different elementary schools because of her struggles with ADHD.

“I had a rather troublesome childhood and then going into high school, I was dealing with a lot of mental issues so I wasn’t able to participate the way I wanted to,” Spivey said.

Yet Spivey found participation when she helped create a CPS-wide presentation condemning alleged racism and bigotry at her alma mater Lane Tech High School in October 2020, something she describes as a turning point. “That really pushed me into being an active participant,” Spivey said.

In addition to her work with the Newman Fellowship, in January Spivey became a first-year experience peer mentor, a program designed to connect first-year students with resources and give them social support. Victor Munoz, the head of the peer mentorship program, said he saw potential in Spivey to become a peer mentor when he saw “her leadership skills, the way she would get along with students, or just help out others.”

While Spivey does not actively mentor students one-on-one, Munoz said the “action-driven” Spivey played a pivotal role in developing the program and planning events.

“If she sees something that will benefit the program she will start working on it and let me know like, ‘Hey Victor I have a really good idea, how about we try this.’ So a lot of the things that we adapted to the peer program it was thanks to Tammy's continuing ideas,” Munoz said.

Spivey said she transferred the event planning skills she learned from the Newman Fellowship into her peer mentorship role, which Munoz said was crucial at a women’s history month event in March. The event was not planned in advance according to Munoz, so when Spivey’s fellow peer mentor Khayla (who was unavailable for comment) was charged with planning the event, she needed someone to step in to help.

“One of the things that stood out was that Tammy did really great in supporting and guiding a lot of the events along with the other peer mentors,” Munoz said. Spivey’s input helped the peer mentors find solutions to problems they encountered. “One thing Tammy took action on was finding tools, because we were deciding on flowers and they needed to be cut,” Munoz said.

In addition to rescuing the flower arrangements of the women’s history month event, flowers occupy Spivey’s free time as she likes to build flower Lego sets. Yet Spivey said, “Outside of that I don’t really have any hobbies, I spend most of my time doing schoolwork and or contributing to something in political engagement.”

In the Newman Fellowship, Spivey demonstrated her dedication to work by devoting energy to preparation, as acknowledged by professor Mayer. “I remember one time she was so worried about not being prepared enough to be a moderator and she did a fabulous job,” Mayer said.

Now preparing to graduate, Spivey must utilize her planning skills to decide what’s next in her education. “I am aiming toward schools that have a connection to a good law school within Chicago and or the Illinois area, so I’m trying to get into Northwestern or the University of Chicago," Spivey said. Munoz said, “Any university that she goes into will highly benefit from those leadership skills.”

While Spivey aspires to be a lawyer or judge, she also wants to be involved politically. That is why she also dreams of becoming a state’s attorney, as she feels it is “something that is able to combine law and politics and hold a sway with both.”

As City Colleges prepares to say goodbye to the graduating Spivey, Munoz said “Tammy is off to a great future.”

Tammatha Spivey begins her dialogue at the post-election chat in November. Gabe Estill and professor Merry Mayer said Spivey was great at initiating dialogue among students.

Photo Credit: Kyle Chmielowski.