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Wednesday, April 10,1996
^^^^^pinion
The Campus Echo
1801 Fayetteville Street
Durham, NC 27707
Editor - Alicia B. Williams
Associate Eiditor - Toni S. King
News Elditor - Victor E. Blue
Sports Editor - Carey Johnson
Features Editor - Derrick Armstead
Art - Dustin Harewood
Layout and Design - A. Williams
Business Manager - Dawn Jones
Staff
Tanya Mitchell, Christie Stancil,
Ann-Marie Nicholson, Warren Greenfield,
Shell! Carpenter, Nanci Green
Advisor- Dr. Gladstone Yearwood
The Echo office is located in Room 319 of the Farrison-Newton Communi
cations Building, NCCU. Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to submit
articles, editorials, and art. Student participation is vital to the quality of our
reporting, please volunteer.
Policy on Letters
The Campus Echo welcomes letters frem readers. Letters should be no more than 300
words in length. The editor reserves the tight to edit all letters and articles, as needed.
A. Prophesy Made iManifest... by Jay Richards
OPINIONS
Minority Presence Grant
not needed to keep whites
I am flying to the Library School
at North Carolina Central University
this fall and am beginning to cast about
for grants. One possible grant would
be the Minority Presence Grant
At NCCU, this grant goes to whites,
as weU as to Hispanic Americans and
Asian Americans. Native Americans
have their own grant.
Although I do not feel entitled to
this grant, I have taken it for two years.
Money is money, after all. But should
I keep taking it as a graduate student?
The grant dates back to the huge
battle which raged between the De
partment of Health, Education and
Welfare and the University of North
Carolina throughout the 1970’s, as the
Department tried to force the Univer
sity to desegregate its campuses, a
struggle which Arnold K. King de
scribes in his book. The Multicampus
University of North Carolina Comes
of Age.
HEW was responsible for enforc
ing Title 6 of the 1964Civil Rights Act
as it applied to schools which received
federal funds; Title 6 forbids all dis
crimination on the basis of ‘ Yace, color
or national origin.”
HEW believed that the desegrega
tion of historically Black campuses
was just as important as thedesegrega-
tion of white ones, so part of UNC’s
final consent decree, or legal compro
mise, was to promise to make Black
campuses at least 15 percent white and
white campuses at least 10.7 percent
Black by 1987.
These goals have stayed the same
since then. The Minority Presence
Grant is, thus, offered to smdents to
help the University system achieve its
quotas, and has nothing to do with
merit.
Money or Respect?
What didHEW have in mind twenty
years ago? It may have hoped to heal
some of the wounds that racism had
inflicted on North Carolina.
It may have hoped to foster toler
ance when it ordered UNC to increase
the number of white students on Black
campuses.
Then, too, UNC back in the 1970s
gave less money to black campuses
than to white ones and HEW hoped
that if black canqtuses had more white
students, they would get more money
and respect
For this reason, HEW also tried to
create programs on black campuses
which would be unduplicated any
where else in the system, so that any
one, regardless of ethnicity, who
wanted to obtain those particulare de
grees would be forced to attend a
black college.
I am the inheritor of the results of
all this turmoil. For the last two years,
my “white person’s grant” has climbed
steadily fi^om a low of one hundred
dollars to a high this semester of four
hundred dollars: asmallportionofmy
aid package, granted, but useful. I
have never felt entitled to it, though I
have never sent it back either. And I
would be lying if I claimed that it did
not recruit me, initially, on some level.
Let me tell you why I chose NCCU.
I cannot speak for all white under
graduates, but I doubt I am unique. I
was too diffident to even try to get into
UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State was
too far to commute.
I am a re-entry student, and I did
not want to move to go back to school.
Once I enrolled, I stayed, because I
like it here. The classes are small, the
teachers are excellent, (at least in the
English department) and from the
socialstandpoint, NCCUprobably has
more older students than, say, UNC-
Chapel HiU.
Financial Lure
The indisputable financial lure of
the Minority Presence Grant pales in
comparison to the huge ovaall amount
of aid NCCU has awarded me, par
ticularly my senior year.
The UNC system could stop ap
plying the Minority Presence Grant to
whites at NCCU and still retain our
presence. The days of racial apartheid
are gone.
You may consider this statement
naive, but it is more true than you
know. Graduate students in many of
NCCU’s programs are actually pre
dominantly white these days, which
tells us that the grant has achieved
what it set out to do, and is no longer
needed.
Melissa Packard
The Dim Future of Historically Black Universities
What do you think
about the media coverage
of the diversity issue?
"When I first saw it, it came up
on WTVD11.1 don’t think we had
enough people talking about what
the student body was saying.
You were hearing about how
the administration felt about it.
I don't think there has been
enough coverage about how the
student body and the people that
go to Central feel about that.
If they do bring in more
students, I want to know how will it
change the university."
Jermaine Daniels,Senior
"I heard about it on one of the
popular radio stations. I can
sympathize with the situation they
were in.
The university wants to bring in
money and I can agree with that.
The dislike with meeting quotas
is that black universities have been
meeting theirs and white institu
tions are falling short.
Bringing in minorities is fine;
Asians, Mexicans and others
though, not just whites."
Ulyssess Hicks, graduate student
"Epipltany
By Alkia B. Williams
At the Honors convocation, I
marvded at the many studoits that were
acknowledged for academic achievemaiL
I laughed to myself at how Barry
Saunders commented in atecemNewsand
Observer commentary that the “black
students at NCCU [don’t] have nearly as
many options,” in the selection of routes
of higher education.
As I looked around the McLendon-
McDougald gymnasium, and saw amyriad
of black faces, I could have laughed out
loud.
In addition to Saunders’ absense, I
failed to see overwhelming numbers of
the outside accusers that have flooded the
airwaves and pages of newsprint to tell
the masses of how the Black students at
NCCU are barring white students from
entrance to the University.
My soul was glad when I looked over
the many pages of the Honors convocation
and saw the names of so many, who had
achieved so much, but suddenly I realized
something else.
Grades don’t mean a thing.
Yeah, they look good on paper, and
earn great graduation gifts, but they only
reveal the ability to obey as commanded.
To survive this corrupt world system,
we need to open our inner eyes and listen
to the soul that cries out from within.
Do you think the white media sent
black reporters to get the scoop on us to
presoit the truth?
Do you think that the main people
speaking freely to the media are chosen
because they really know what’s going
on, or they are hand-diosen because they
operate from emotion?
Do you really think that all that is
happening to this university is haphazard?
Read on:
Common student goals override differences
Recent articles in the “News and
Observer,” and the “Campus Echo”
dealing with the recruitment of
minority students in order to obtain
diversity prompted me to think about
my position as an older, minority
student at North Carolina Central
University.
From an administrative
standpoint, NCCU administrators and
faculty have a greater understanding
of the obstacles faced by people who
are juggling many facets of their lives
to attend school and complete their
education than their counterparts at
other universities.
For some, the concern is to carry
forward old college credits, for
others, it is the ability to coordinate
family, job and scholastic work
load.
For the most part, our needs are
being met.
I cannot say that I had no anxiety
about my decision to attend NCCU,
but choosing to attend school here
is one of the best decisions I have
ever made.
Of course, there are times I feel
strange and out of place, mostly
because I am older than many of the
parents of my classmates, and
sometimes, because of my own sense
that I am different; however, our
common goal as students,
education,overrides this difference.
I have not been isolated or been
made to feel uncomfortable, and,
when I graduate in 1997,1 w ill accept
my degree with gratitude for having
been personally enriched by the
relationships I have experienced.
Sharon Mayer