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®l)e Cj)adotte
THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 2006
LIFE
Section
Black
colleges are
trying to
diversify
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATLANTA - Faced with stiff
competition for their tradi
tional students, historically
black colleges are now mak
ing a push to recruit
Hispanics.
Black colleges that want to
shore up enrollment numbers
are revising recruitment
strategies to include more
members of the nation’s
largest and fastest-growing
minority. The campuses are
hiring Hispanic recruiters,
distributing brochures that
feature Hispanic students
and establishing special schol
arships for Hispanics.
“I tell them There’s a place
for you and a need for Latinos
to be present on (historically
black) campuses,” said Nelson
Santiago, a Puerto Rico native
and recruiter for the histori
cally black Howard
University in Washington,
D.C., which has about 170
Hispanics out of 11,500 stu
dents.
Santiago and recruiters
from other schools, including
the all-male Morehouse
College in Atlanta, are visit
ing predominantly Hispanic
high schools and setting up
booths at college fairs to
recruit Hispanics. Morehouse
sends recruiters to high
schools in southern Florida,
New York, eastern "Ifexas and
Los Angeles - areas with large
Hispanic populations.
“Considering Latinos and
African-Americans share a lot
of history together that they
don’t realize, I think it’s a good
idea,” said John Miranda, the
21-year-old son of Brazilian
immigraiits who is one of 15
Hispanics enrolled at the
2,800-student Morehouse.
Miranda, of . Silver Spring,
Md., said he picked
Morehouse because he was
offered a full scholarship
■funded by an Atlanta founda
tion that promotes the educa
tion of Hispanics.
Morehouse’s goal is for at
least 5 percent of its student
body to consist of Hispanics
within five years. If its cur
rent overall enrollment holds
steady, the school will need
125 more Hispanic students
by 2011 to reach that goal.
In the 1990s, Hispanics sur
passed blacks as the nation’s
largest minority. The number
of Hispanics in the United
States grew by nearly 60 per
cent that decade, while the
number of blacks only grew
by about 15 percent.
At the same time, the com
petition for black students has
increased as public colleges
nationwide try to improve
diversity by recruiting more
minorities. Federal courts
have forced some state higher
education systems, especially
in the South, to meet specific
black recruitment goals under
desegregation lawsuits from
the 1960s.
The number of Hispanic
students attending historical
ly black colleges increased
more than 60 percent from
1994 to 2004, while the num
ber of black students grew by
35 percent, according to the
U.S. • Department of
Education.
Some students and alumni
worried about the new
recruitment strategy.
“I do have concerns,” said
Earl Nero, a retired Atlanta
businessman and 1974
Morehouse graduate. “Since
the college has determined
they want to stay the same
size they are, that would take
away space from qualified
African-American students.”
But having other minorities
attending a historically black
Please see BLACK /3B
omo
PHOTO/CALVIN FERGUSON
Influence Entertainment co-founders Larry Moore, Scott Bishop, and Damon Nash created a line of tee-shirts
with positive messages aimed at the hip hop generation. “Stop Celebrating Ignorance” is the line’s best seller.
Gear fits to a T(shirt)
Positive slogans point out a message of empowerment
By Chens F. Hodges
chere.hodges^/hechortoffeposf.com
By now, everyone is familiar with
the “Stop Snitching” tee-shirts that
many in the hip hop generation wear.
But wouldn’t it be something if some
one made a shirt that said “Stop
Celebrating Ignorance?”
And instead of young women wear
ing shirts with suggestive slogans like
“Look at These” across their breast,
they wore “I Am Stronger Than My
Situation?”
Somebody has, thankfully.
Raleigh-based Influence
Entertainment Inc. has created a line
of hip-hop tees that are trendy and
positive at the same time. From the
baby dolls for women to oversized
shirts for guys, these shirts have a-
message that looks good with jeans.
But shirts are just the beginning.
Influence Entertainment, headed by
Damon Netsh and George Bulgin, is a
team of hip-hop motivational speak
ers who believe in creating a positive
influence for the community.
“Since we are influenced by our envi
ronment, we strive to make our envi
ronment an empowered one,” they say
on their web site, www.hiphopsmoti-
vation.com.
When Nash and his speakers talk to
churches and schools, they do it free of
charge, he said as he sold shirts at the
Charlotte Literary Festival in NoDa.
‘We use the tee-shirts as a fund rais
er,” he said.
When people see the shirts, Nash
said, their response is often, where
can I get one.
“While we were in Charlotte, we
went to Concord Mills Mall and we
sold two shirts out of the trunk of our
car, just because people were interest
ed in what our shirt said. We weren’t
soliciting or trying to make a sale,” he
said.
Nash and his partners wore the
“Stop Celebrating Ignorance” shirts at
the time and the customer who
bought the pair told Nash that he’d
been thinking the same thing.
See HIP HOPTEES/3B
AIDS COCKTAIL
Study finds no advantage to 4th drug
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO—A four-drug cocktail
is not any better for treating newly
diagnosed HIV infection than the
standard three-drug regimen,
according to a study that followed
765 patients for three years.
The finding is welcome news to
patient advocates, despite the lack
of a step forward in treatment.
Adding a fourth drug would have
raised costs in an already overbur
dened system in which some states
report waiting lists of uninsured
patients who need help paying for
their HIV drugs.
The annual cost per person for
antiretroviral drug therapy in 2001
was about $11,000 a year, according
to a previous study.
Murray Penner of the National
Alliance of State and Tbrritorial
AIDS Directors estimated that
adding more drugs to already com
plex regimens could cost health sys
tems millions of dollars more.
“Keeping treatment regimens as
simple as possible is also good news
for people living with HIV/AIDS as
adherence (taking drugs as pre
scribed) is better with easier and
smaller regimens,” Penner said.
Adding a drug to the cocktail also
could increase side effects and the
potential for dangerous drug inter
actions, said Jim Pickett of the
AIDS Foundation of Chicago.
'The new study clears up a lingering
question posed by the conflicting results
of prior studies. Some smaller studies had
found a quicker effect at beating back the
virus when more drugs were added to the
cocktail, while others foimd no added ben
efit.
“Triple drug therapy Has been the stan
dard approach to treatment of HIV infec
tion for a decade or so, but there’s always
been a question about whether we could
do better with more drugs,” said study co
author Dr. Dan Kuritzkes of Harvard’s
Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
‘This reaffirms the potency of the cur
rent standard of care,” Kuritzkes said.
See STUDY/3B
Study: Teens tap into internet alcohol market
By Chens F. Hodges
cheris,/iodges@fhechartol(eposf.ci
Underaged drinkers don’t
need a fake ID to get alco
hol anymore. All they need
is an internet connection
and a credit card.
According to study by
Teenage Research
Unlimited, 3.1 million
minors know a friend who’s
ordered alcohol over the
internet. Two percent of all
minors who participated in
the study said they have
purchased alcohol online.
Key findings from the
report show that once teens
buy alcohol online, they
share with fiiends.
“This is a dangerous situ
ation. For the first time we
have hard evidence that
millions of kids are buying'
alcohol online and that the
Internet is fast becoming a
high-tech, low-risk way for
kids to get liquor delivered
to their home with no ID
check,” said Wine and
Spirits Wholesalers of
America chairman Stan
Hastings. “This landmark
data is alarming because
state legislatures are
rushing to allow wine and
other online alcohol sales
at a time we know regula
tory agencies are telling us
they are unable to monitor
these tTOes of sales
because they lack man
power and resources.”
On the web site
www.pointclickdrink.com,
which is sponsored by the
Wine and Spirit
Wholesalers, a video
shows a FedEx delivery to
a minor who ordered
liquor online. The driver
never checked the girl’s
ID.
In North Carolina, a law
was enacted in 2003 that
allows direct shipping of
alcohol to consumers, but
limits it to two cases per
month. Across the border
in South Carolina, a con-
Please see ALCOHOL/3B
PHOTO/THE STOCK MARKET
A study says that teens who buy alcohol share it.
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Living with
history of
medical
experiments
Trust is a key element of an
effective patient-provider rela
tionship. It is also necessary for
successful collaborations
between research investigators
and study participants.
Still, Afncan Americans are
less likely to participate in
medical research and are less
willing to participate in blood
or organ donation. Recent
studies have also found that
minorities in general are also
less likely to trust medical
institutions and health care
providers than are white
Americans. As one physician
noted in the Journal of General
Internal Medicine, “Without
trust, how can physicians
expect patients to reveal the
full extent of their medically-
relevant history, expose them
selves to the physical examina
tion, or act on recommenda
tions for tests or treatments?”
(S D Goold, 2002).
Why the distrust?
Many cite the US Public
Health Service Study of
Untreated Syphilis in the
Negro Male (commonly called
the Tuskegee Syphilis Study)
as the primary cause for some
of the present attitudes
expressed by African
Americans. The 40-year, gov
ernment-funded study was
conducted from 1932 to 1972 in
Macon County, Alabama.
When treatment for syphilis
became available, it was inten
tionally denied to 399 black
male study participants to doc
ument the natural progression
of the disease. The association
between the Tuskegee Syphilis
Study and community mis
trust remained so strong, that
in 1997 it prompted a formal
apology from then President
Clinton in a White House cere
mony. While myths regarding
the nature of the study persist
in minority communities
across the country, recent stud
ies have found that awareness
of the 'Ihskegee study alone
does not influence a person’s
decision on whether to partici
pate in a clinical research trial.
Nonetheless, current
research indicates that the dis
trust among African
Americans predates the
Tuskegee revelations and can
not be attributed to a single
historical event or study. For
example, the 19th century
medical abuse of slaves is well
documented, as are more
recent studies in prison popu
lations and forced sterilizations
of women. Many m34hs and
misconceptions have also
arisen regarding the introduc
tion of the HIV/AIDS virus into
minority communities and the
withholding of appropriate
treatment.
Why does trust matter?
'Trust has been identified as a
critical factor in achieving pos
itive health outcomes. Trust
results in improved patient
satisfaction, improved
provider-patient communica
tion, greater adherence to med
ical recommendations and
improved continuity of care.
Patients who feel reassured
about their physicians’ recom
mendations are less likely to
seek additional tests and refer
rals. Conversely, distrust may
adversely impact a person’s
Please see RESEARCH/3B