Image above: Howard University Coalition for Good Trouble Co-Chairs Jayda Gray (left) and Sophia Hurtado-Hernández (right). Photo by Cedric Mobley.

Jayda Gray and Sophia Hurtado-Hernández have spent the past few years stirring up a bit of trouble at Howard University — good trouble. As co-chairs of the Coalition for Good Trouble, the graduating senior political science majors have taken the lead in promoting voting among Howard’s students. By setting up tables with information, hosting events, and using social media to educate and inform, they are meeting students where they are and promoting civic engagement. Both developed a passion for politics at an early age but were surprised at the lack of voter engagement in their communities. Now, they are determined to do something about it.

Howard’s Coalition for Good Trouble was founded in 2022 by Dean of Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel Bernard L. Richardson, Ph.D., and focuses on engaging and mobilizing Howard University students to affect social change through voting and legislation. The student-led organization works to educate their peers about voting rights, stressing the need to embrace their power to influence the direction of the nation. They also work to protect community voting rights. This year, the organization focused on creating a voter education guide outlining the voter laws for every state and providing students with step-by-step actions to secure absentee ballots so they could vote in their hometown local and state elections even while away at Howard. The organization’s name is based on a common saying of the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, who said that engaging in advocacy for justice was “good trouble,” even if it made some people uncomfortable.

Gray is a political science and sociology double major with a community development and history double minor from Richmond, California. She spent her teenage years as a community organizer for the Oakland-based Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center, helping to register and educate voters about legislative initiatives affecting schools and families. When she got to Howard, she ran across the Coalition for Good Trouble while they were doing outreach using a table with information about voting. When she saw the association with John Lewis, she was immediately hooked.

“I started as a community organizer back home when I was 15 as a student,” said Gray. “I was educated on Dr. King's nonviolence philosophy and how that translates into action work and canvassing. From that, I got to see the large amounts of people in my own community that don't vote, and yet we went to the wealthier, whiter areas, almost everyone was registered to vote. When I got here to campus, Good Trouble was tabling right in front of the Blackburn to promote voting in the 2022 midterms. I saw the name John Lewis and that immediately got me to the organization — simply seeing fellow students understand the importance of voting in every single election, not just the presidential election, but even starting with midterms and locally. Since my freshman year, I've been involved in Good Trouble, because of the philosophy of using our voice in every aspect of student life here and beyond.”

Hurtado-Hernández’s activism and advocacy is personal. Before she came to college, she was struck by the apathy towards voting she saw in her community. She realized that voters affect laws and laws affect people in countless ways, and has made it part of her personal mission to get more people involved in the civic process.

“I started thinking about voting when I was very young,” said Hurtado-Hernández, whose hometown is Portland, Oregon. “My cousins and I were the first generation to be able to vote here in the US. So, from a very young age, I saw the importance of voting. I would ask some of my older cousins who are millennials to vote, and they refused to. They said that there wasn't any reason to. But after doing my own research, looking into history, I realized that, yes, voting does make a huge impact on what type of laws we get to see and where we see them.”

Gray came to Howard in part because of the example set by a fellow Californian, alumna Kamala Harris (B.A. ’86, LLD ’12, DHL ’17), the only woman to ever serve as U.S. vice president. In addition to her leadership role in the Coalition for Good Trouble, she also serves as the first vice president of the Chapel Assistants, the student organization responsible for helping to organize the programming of Howard’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel. She also participated in Howard’s Alternative Spring Break, where she worked to promote interfaith community engagement with a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple, a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic church, and a Christian church. She believes that religion can combat the toxic individualism rampant in the world today and has grown immensely from attending Chapel services and the lessons in history and power delivered informally by scholars and leaders like Richardson, which can put the current hyper-political global environment into a more comprehensive context. 

After graduation, Gray hopes to attend graduate school to study public policy and public administration. She’s already served as an intern in the office of then-Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D.L. ’25), now the mayor of Oakland, California, who was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Howard in 2025. She wants to help nonprofits navigate a grant-writing and funding process that right now seems hostile to work in minority and marginalized communities and to eventually pursue civil rights law.

Hurtado-Hernández, a political science major with a criminology minor, is studying for the LSAT in hopes of attending law school to study immigration law. She has been particularly concerned about the recent tactics of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and its impact on Latino communities. She wants to work in public policy, both in Washington, D.C. and back home in Portland. She thinks everyone should have a better understanding about how politics and public policy truly affects them.

“Politics have been affecting me from the very beginning,” Hurtado- Hernández said. Even during the 2008 recession, it affected my food access. It affected how easily it was to access pre-K education. It affects everything that we do. If we're able to promote political education and voting education through Good Trouble, then that's what we should do right now.”

When she was choosing colleges she would apply to, Hurtado- Hernández spent a lot of time researching the best schools to study political science. Howard kept appearing in her searches. As a Bison, she has loved her curricular journey and has been invigorated even in the most difficult courses.

“I came to Howard because of the academic rigor that this university offers, and honestly, it has been truly amazing,” Hurtado- Hernández said. “The amount of times that my classes have challenged even the way that I think has been extremely transformative.”

Before she enrolled at Howard, Hurtado- Hernández was already tired of being gaslit by those who “softened” history by leaving out the systematic discrimination, inequities, and atrocities committed in this country. Also inspired by Harris, she came to Howard because “that’s where the true history is going to be told,” she said. One of the most important lessons she has learned at Howard is that she doesn’t have to accept things as they are.

“Honestly, the thing that I will take from Howard is the confidence that I have been able to build through the knowledge I've learned here,” she said. “The courses that have been taught here are truly, truly amazing. They are blunt, they're straightforward, and they make you actually think and question everything. So, one of the things that I will be taking forward from Howard is also questioning everything — questioning authority and questioning where certain things are coming from. And also, finding a community to ground myself in, because as women of color, who will be working, hopefully, in politics and the law, it'll be a very challenging experience, especially if we continue with this political climate.”