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Enrollment declines threaten future of HBCUs, disheartening alumni
The 101 black colleges and universities in the U.S. had their second-lowest student totals in 17 years in the 2018-19 school year.
Darrell Dial entered South Carolina State University in 1987 as a “country boy,” a bit unsure of himself, and graduated with a degree in biology four years later as a man ready to take on the world.
He attributes his development to his experience at the historically black university in Orangeburg, South Carolina — the curriculum but mostly the reassuring, nurturing environment.
“It was a melting pot of high intelligence and backgrounds,” said Dial, 51, a molecular genomics scientist who lives in Atlanta. “This black diversity made a great playground for great debate and banter. It was truly iron sharpening iron for us all. I wouldn’t be the man I am if it weren’t for South Carolina State.”
Dial’s experience and sentiments mirror thousands of graduates of historically black colleges and universities at a time when HBCUs are experiencing an alarming drop in enrollment, to the second-lowest rate last year in 17 years, according to a new report.
According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, more than 6,000 fewer students attended the 101 black colleges and universities in the U.S. during the 2018-19 school year. The 291,767 total was down from the 298,134 in the previous year, and was the lowest total since 2001, when there were 289,985 students at historically black colleges.
HBCUs provided black students an opportunity for a higher education when mainstream colleges were segregated. Cheyney University, founded in 1837 as Cheyney State College, was the first historically black college. Today, it is in financial disrepair and on the verge of collapse, having lost 38 percent of its student body in 2018. Enrollment at Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, dropped 20 percent, and its president, Brent Chrite, sent a letter to alumni on Jan. 27 that told of its precarious situation.
“2020 will be a pivotal year in history of B-CU,” Chrite wrote. “It will be the year our beloved university prepared to close its doors, or it will be the year we turned a corner and began moving toward an exciting future.”
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges has required that BC-U wipe out its $8 million operating deficit before submitting its re-accreditation application this month. If accreditation is revoked, B-CU would lose access to most of its more than $7 million in federal funding.
“We cannot survive as a university without it,” Chrite wrote.
Bethune-Cookman’s plight is one of several cases of HBCUs in survival mode.
“There is a distinct possibility that a number of HBCUs could cease to exist in 20 years or so,” said Ronnie Bagley, a retired Army colonel who graduated from Norfolk State University in 1983. “If that were to occur, many low income, first generation students will lose out on an opportunity for a college education.
“That’s scary because HBCUs have been the bedrock of producing some of the most successful and influential contributors in all facets of society, including business, government, military, arts and entertainment. You name it.”
The NCES study does not explain the drop in HBCU enrollment, but there are indications of multiple factors:
- HBCUs lost $50 million when the Department of Education made it more difficult to acquire the PLUS Loan that many schools relied on, according to The Edvocate, which researches educational trends, issues and futures.
- HBCU retention rates—keeping students in school year after year—are lower than predominantly white institutions. A U.S. News study indicates Spelman College leads HBCUs with an 88 percent retention rate, but many other schools drop as low as 50 percent because of financial issues and schools’ inadequate inducements for students to continue their education.
- The explosive appeal of online colleges like DeVry and the University of Phoenix has hit HBCUs hard, according to The Edvocate. HBCUs had been considered a prime place for challenged or “underdog” students, but online options are trending because they are less expensive. Compounding matters, most HBCUs have not implemented thorough online classes or degree programs.
- Investment in some campuses and facilities, like at Norfolk State and North Carolina A&T, has been impressive. But the lack of contemporary technology and building upkeep at many HBCUs — like at Tennessee State, where enrollment has dipped for 10 straight years — has turned away black students.
Added Bagley: “In many cases predominantly white institutions are looking to become more diverse by offering minorities scholarships. While I wanted my children to follow in my footsteps and attend an HBCU, preferably my alma mater, the HBCUs we visited couldn’t offer the kind of money the University of Kentucky did.”
Elaine Brown, a radiologist in San Antonio, turned down a full scholarship to the University of Louisville’s Medical School to attend Meharry Medical College, the HBCU in Nashville renowned for producing black doctors. She had attended historically black Fisk University in Nashville, was crowned Miss Fisk and felt an iron-clad connection to that experience.
“My parents thought I was crazy,” she said. “But it was not just about the education, but the social aspect as well. When I’m with HBCU alums and others who did not attend an HBCU, they don’t understand the effervescence we have when talking about our experiences. … I visited Fisk during my senior year of high school and I never looked back. It was a loving, nurturing, safe space. Sadly, a lot of young people perceive that there is more opportunity and promise at larger institutions.”
All of these factors concern HBCU alums.
“It’s scary because I know how the black college experience elevates you as a person, helps you secure your identity,” said Jacobi Eaves, a 2009 graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, which then cost $160,000 over his four years. “A big reason for the downturn has to be about the cost of tuition. It continues to rise, and students leave college in debt. There has to be student loan forgiveness.”
Flecia Brown, a 1988 Spelman College graduate from Detroit, said misconceptions about HBCUs is another other factor in enrollment decline. “It speaks to non-HBCUers’ lack of confidence and understanding of the history, prestige and educational excellence that goes along with attending an HBCU,” Brown, a manager at an executive recruiter firm, said.
“My experience at Spelman was an extension of how I was raised by my parents. It taught me to be unapologetically black, built character and confidence. … When my brother (who did not attend an HBCU) was facing his oldest son’s high school graduation and was in search of a college, there was an absence of HBCUs. And I called him out on it,” she said. “His response was that nobody really talks about or promotes HBCUs in his Los Angeles community. Of course, that was very disappointing.”
Kathy Brown, who graduated as a mechanical engineer from Tennessee State in 1993, said the inherent issues—older facilities, long lines, dormitory maintenance issues—did not taint her HBCU experience. “Those frustrations were offset by a rigorous curriculum and everlasting memories unique to HBCUs,” she said. “But TSU has had 10 years of declining enrollment, and this saddens me.”
Not all schools are struggling, however. North Carolina A&T, for example, has experienced yearly growth in attendance for the last decade. Donations overall to black colleges increased for the ninth straight year, including $479 million for 2018, according to federal data.
So what is the fix? It is a complex answer, but Dial has a theory.
“Presidents have to be more of businessmen and women who understand the university is a business and work hard to align themselves with major corporations,” Dial said. “They need to create partnerships with black and brown countries to offer education to those countries’ young minds in an effort to receive financial backing. This minimizes the need for the handouts from the state and low alumni support, which is another conversation.”
Article via NBC
Singer JoJo says she was put on 500 calorie-a-day diet as a teen
JoJo said that she saw a nutritionist who had her on a 500 calorie-a-day diet and that she received injections that made her have no appetite.
Singer JoJo opened up about body image in a recent interview, revealing that she was put on a 500 calorie-a-day diet as a teenager.
JoJo, born Joanna Levesque, 29, said in the wide-ranging interview with Uproxx that, in her teens, she was eager to release new music but that her record label at the time, Blackground Records, had burned a lot of bridges with different distribution companies.
She said that at one point she thought her appearance was preventing the release of her music.
“Because when I was 18, I remember being sat down in the Blackground office and the president of the label being like, ‘We just want you to look as healthy as possible,'” she recalled.
JoJo, who topped the charts when she was 13 with her debut single, “Leave, Get Out,” said she responded: “I’m actually the picture of health. I look like a healthy girl who eats and is active, and I don’t think that this is about my health. I think that you want me to be really skinny.”
Despite the label president’s denial, JoJo said that she was put in contact with a nutritionist who had her on a 500 calorie-a-day diet and that she received injections that made her have no appetite.
“Let me see how skinny I can get,” she said she remembered thinking. “Because maybe then they’ll put out an album. Maybe I’m just so disgusting that no one wants to see me in a video and that they can’t even look at me.”
JoJo said she isn’t angry for being looked at as a product, because as an artist she believes she is one.
“I am speaking, I would say, for probably every woman in this industry that, you know, your image and your weight is up for conversation,” she said. “And it’s just uncomfortable. It’s hard enough being a woman.”
JoJo said she felt that she was not enough and was dissatisfying, so she turned to alcohol and sought out validation. There were nights she stumbled out of clubs or blacked out “and was completely reckless.”
“I needed to be buzzed to feel OK,” she said.
When asked whether she relied on substances “for a while,” JoJo responded yes and said she was able to overcome addiction by resolving not to end up like her father, who she said was an addict and died in November 2015.
JoJo was finally released from her contract with Blackground in 2014 after a yearslong legal battle.
Article via NBC
Four black men accused of 1949 rape of white woman in Florida are pardoned
Four black men accused of 1949 rape of white woman in Florida are pardoned
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — After a dramatic, hour-long meeting that recalled events from nearly seven decades ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s three-member Cabinet granted posthumous pardons Friday to four African-American men accused of raping a white woman in a 1949 case now seen as a racial injustice.
The case of the men known as the Groveland Four has been documented in a book and is considered a blight on Florida’s history. One of the four was killed before he could be charged and the other three were convicted on dubious evidence.
The families of the men accused of the assault told DeSantis and the Cabinet — meeting as the clemency board — that there is overwhelming evidence the men were innocent and there was no rape. The woman who was 17 when she said she was raped, sat in a wheelchair and later told Gov. DeSantis and the Cabinet the rape did indeed happen, saying she was dragged from a car, had a gun put to her head and was told not to scream or they would “blow your brains out.”
At one point, the two sides briefly clashed. Beverly Robinson, a niece of one of the Groveland Four, was speaking to the governor and the Cabinet when she turned to the woman and her sons.
“It never happened. You all are liars,” Robinson said.
“That’s enough out of you,” the woman said.
“I know it’s enough out of me. It’s always enough when you’re telling the truth,” Robinson replied.
The unanimous vote to pardon came almost two years after the state House and Senate voted to formally apologize to relatives of the Groveland Four and to ask then-Gov. Rick Scott to pardon the men. Scott, now a U.S. senator, never took action. DeSantis replaced Scott on Tuesday and made the pardons a priority.
“I don’t know that there’s any way you can look at this case and think that those ideals of justice were satisfied. Indeed, they were perverted time and time again, and I think the way this was carried out was a miscarriage of justice,” DeSantis said.
The ordeal began in Lake County in 1949, when the then-17-year-old said she had been raped. Three of the men were arrested and severely beaten; a fourth, Ernest Thomas, fled.
A posse of about 1,000 men was formed to hunt down Thomas. He was shot 400 times when they found him sleeping under a tree. White residents also formed a mob and went to a black neighborhood, burning houses and firing guns into homes in a disturbance that took days to quell.
Charles Greenlee, Walter Irvin and Samuel Shepherd were convicted by an all-white jury. Other evidence that could have exonerated them — such as a doctor’s conclusion that the teen probably wasn’t raped — was withheld at their trial. Greenlee was sentenced to life, and Irvin and Shepherd to death.
Thurgood Marshall, later the first African-American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, took up Irvin and Shepherd’s appeals for the NAACP, and in 1951 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered new trials.
Just before those trials began, Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall shot Irvin and Shepherd, claiming the handcuffed men tried to escape as he transferred them from prison to a jail. Shepherd died. Irvin was shot in the neck and survived despite an ambulance refusing to transport him because he was black. He was again convicted, even though a former FBI agent testified that prosecutors manufactured evidence against him.
Charges were never brought against any white law enforcement officers or prosecutors who handled the cases.
Irvin was paroled in 1968 and found dead in his car while returning to Lake County for a funeral a year later.
Greenlee was paroled in 1960 and died in 2012.
Greenlee’s daughter, Carol Greenlee, told DeSantis and the Cabinet that there was overwhelming evidence that her father was innocent.
“He was accused, put in jail and tortured for something he didn’t do,” she said.
The woman who said she was raped disputed the families’ stories.
“Y’all just don’t know what kind of horror I’ve been through for all these many years,” she said. “I don’t want them pardoned, no I do not, and you wouldn’t neither. I know (Robinson) called me a liar, but I’m not no liar.”
Afterward, state Sen. Gary Farmer, who sponsored the 2017 resolution apologizing to the families, said the woman’s comments were disappointing.
“She’s now here at the end of her life and she had a chance to come clean, to seek forgiveness for herself and to support the justice these four families and these four men deserve,” Farmer said. “It’s very said that she lost this opportunity and continues to perpetuate this lie. This crime did not happen. The evidence is overwhelming.”
Article via NBCNews
Trump demands Mexico send migrants back to countries of origin after border patrol fires tear gas
Trump tweeted Monday that Mexican officials should remove migrants from the border by airplane, bus or “any way you want.”
President Donald Trump tweeted Monday that Mexican officials should ship the thousands of Central American migrants seeking entry into the U.S. back to their countries of origin by any means necessary, claiming that “many” are “stone cold criminals.”
Trump suggested that Mexico send the migrants back to countries such as Guatemala and Honduras by airplane, bus, or “anyway you want.” The president also threatened to shut down the U.S. Southern Border “permanently” if needed.
The tweet comes after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials fired tear gas on hundreds of migrants who sought to enter the U.S. on Sunday near San Diego. That interaction led to U.S. officials shutting down the San Ysidro Port of Entry between San Diego and Tijuana for more than six hours.
In a statement, border patrol said it used tear gas and pepper spray after several migrants tossed rocks at agents, who were struck. No injuries were reported.
“DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public safety reasons,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said in a Sunday statement.
Some migrants, meanwhile, said they sought to cross over illegally after they were denied access at the port of entry, where they could claim asylum. It is not illegal to seek asylum.
The hundreds of migrants who assembled along the Mexican side of the border on Sunday morning were a part of a larger group of about 6,000 who crammed into shelters in Tijuana. Many of the migrants are fleeing violence in their home countries.
Article via NBCNews