Before I make my point, let me make this disclaimer. In no way am I writing this article to put down all HBCU's or to make brash and condescending remarks about them.
I love attending HBCU's and my experience at these institutions is one that centers around being apart of a family that takes care of its own.
In the light of the Robert Champion hazing incident at Florida A&M University, one would question how relevant are HBCU's in the age of the nations first black president?
I ask this question simply because if HBCU's are suppose to develop black students into scholars then why are we engaging in activities that put people in a position to be made inferior? why do black students want to be apart of an entity instead of being individuals?
At HBCU's Hazing activities are often looked at as a rite of passage into a band or a Greek letter organization. these activities could go from being mild to extremely severe! and some could even cause death. these activities include "Taking Wood", reciting each of your line brothers names, memorizing the Greek letter alphabet, memorizing the chapter and national history, doing chores for your brothers, memorizing chants, handshakes, and most times taking a beating before you cross over.
How could a matriculating student be able to focus on college if they have to go through this just to be apart of some organization that probably won't be around when he graduates?
HBCU's pride themselves on this type of activity. Hazing during the 60's and 70's was suppose to make a man or a woman out of you. it was also used as a reminder of where you came from and that you stood on the backs of individuals that went through the same ordeal. and if you chose not to get hazed you would be known as a "skater".
this is the type of mentality that still exists at HBCU's the fact that even if you got into an organization as a full fledge member you will still not be considered a brother or a sister of their organization in the same respects as most members who went through the hazing process.
also if a person was hazed and died in the process of the incident, the organization would not have any remorse or sympathy for that member; not even the university itself.
what is very irresponsible about this incident is that black people are willing to stand by these institutions for the sake of preserving the legacy while letting an individuals death be excused as a PR stunt to protect the universities image of being a proud institution of learning. yet these types of activities go on at predominately White institutions as well. Why? because most black Greek letter organizations are housed under the National Pan Hellenic Council so the argument still stands that hazing is not a white Greek letter problem but A black problem! most people say that I am being biased about this issue for the simple fact that hazing goes on at all schools. but the fact still remains that this is embraced at HBCU's.
since the death of Robert Champion, Florida A&M University will probably return back to being an image of a proud institution that took the life of one of there own. the president will probably bat an eye to this situation since the school was not responsible. but he was responsible and all HBCU's were responsible for Robert Champions death.
aside from this incident, A Mother and her family will no longer be able to see their child walk across the stage. and yet he went to a so called institution of higher learning just to die in order to be apart of a band.
we send our children to these institutions every year, and yet you never know whether your child is going to come back home with degree or in a casket. simply because you wanted to become apart of an entity.
many black colleges, pride themselves on being known for their legacy, the wildest homecomings, the loudest bands and the finest men and women. yet they never pride themselves on being the best institution for an education.
I say this for many reasons, my first reason is because when you look at white institutions education is prided first and foremost when attending places like Penn state, Harvard, and Yale. at HBCU's they pride themselves as a school that offers great a great legacy while education takes a back seat to things like life on the yard, fine men and women, and the best parties.
In October 2006 when I was just starting my junior year of High School, I attended a college fair with my high school. when walking pass the many tables that didn't interest me I decided to walk over to the Tuskegee University table to pick up some information. all I knew about Tuskegee was Booker T Washington and that was it. I went over to another table called Bethune Cookman college and that's when I was hooked. I didn't want to go anywhere else except Bethune cookman simply because it was near daytona beach and i would not have to travel far to go to Miami or Disney world. by November 2006, I was blinded by a light called Howard University and that's when I wanted to go there and nowhere else.
my parents wanted me to go to Morgan State simply to get my foot in the door, but I tried so many times not to go to Morgan simply because I was from Baltimore and because I knew Morgan was nothing more than a college level high school. Once I got into Morgan State, all I wanted to do was get a degree and get the hell outta there because Morgan was known as the school that graduated students in seven years! when I went to the open house in February 2008, the only major I had my sights set on was the communications department. there was no other major I wanted to go into because I knew when I got out; I wanted to be a filmmaker!
When I entered my freshmen year, that point was the make you or break you year! i gotta 3.1 GPA my first semester, great starting out! but as I progressed further into my major I started to encounter problems. when I took a media writing class my freshmen year, i had a professor named jam Donaldson an adjunct who traveled from DC to Baltimore just to teach classes. my classmates knew her from the famous blog called HotGhettomess.com. you could tell this was not a regular professor because a professor doesn't make excuses for not showing up for class. she was teaching evening classes which were three hours long! she missed three weeks simply because 1. she got robbed, 2. her dog got sick and 3. somebody stole her car!
we were required to do assignments that did not give insight into basic media writing ever! she was very sarcastic and was very anal to her students. and yet she was fired the next following semester. during the semester of 2009, I volunteered for the spokesmen insider a broadcast journalism TV show. In the process of joining that organization and WMSU-TV, I was not able to check out any cameras since there was a shortage of equipment and since I was not registered to take a production class. eventhough I was a production major, I was not able to produce anything since I had not taken a class! During the summer of 2009, the advisor of The Spokesman newspaper was fired over an article over an article that was published by a student. this incident was clearly a violation of student free speech rights.
In fall 2009, I took a basic media studies class and this one professor just lectured about conspiracy Theories, Cointelpro and capitalism. he was so adamant in telling us about our black history that we failed to even learn about how media works! he even showed us the articles of confederation, and Mao's little red book. instead of this class being about media it was about getting ready for the Revolution!
In spring 2010, I had another professor for humanities class she was in her seventies, and all she could do is ramble on about how blackmen had a golden opportunity and how the dropout rate of high schoolers is higher for black men than it was for women. and we only went over black books like things fall apart, Richard wright, and Langston Hugues.
Aside from these types of classes, my school overall was lacking the fundamentals for me to be successful! I was going to a school where we had a lack of smart classrooms and lecture halls. we had no wireless Internet connection! and the people were plain rude and disrespectful to students. we had a new library, yet it was just a hangout spot for students to get on the computer and the books were as old as the campus itself!
HBCU's Pride themselves on providing an education to prepare you for the future, but when we talk about the future were not talking about living in the past! HBCU's still carry themselves as only a "Black Institution" deeply rooted in Social Justice! yet this is the very type of mentality that will disenfranchise us as a people because we are too stubborn to realize that the real world is no longer segregated or socially disenfranchised!
I loved my HBCU, but I could no longer stand by and support them when Hazing incidences like this continue to happen!
When I was living in a dorm at Morgan State I got to see the rough side of what an HBCU really stood for. It stood for smoking weed, drinking, going to frat parties, having sex with multiple women. and getting shot and robbed late at night! and yet we were waking up the next morning and going to class where people came in late, and just didn't give a two cents worth about what they learned. not to say that this doesn't happen at other schools, but this was priority over everything academic at Morgan State. And when Home Coming came around like always it was about the parade, football games, coronation, pep rallies, and fraternities coming back to campus.
And yet once they graduate, they'll always see racism around every corner in the workplace. because they were conditioned to think that the world evolves around them simply because they are black. one thing I can fault HBCU's for is the lack of diversity and their lack of recruiting students from different racial backgrounds. when I attended Morgan, I didn't see one white student on campus until 2010! and most of the racial make up of Morgan's campus is below 1%. many of the African and Caribbean students on campus were nowhere to be seen on campus unless it was in the school of engineering! and yet most of the white students were made to feel marginalized on their campus.
HBCU's are practicing a form of reverse discrimination when they marginalize white students and other races in their campus community. and being that Morgan was deeply rooted in Afrocentric views, it would make the campus an unfriendly environment for students of other races. this year I encountered a problem when my major was not offered at the institution, I talked to the dean about a major that was offered but did not have instructors to provide for the courses under the new track that the claimed the offered. the dean had told me that I would have to wait a whole year just to provide instructors for the new major yet I had already took an Introductory course for that particular track. I was trying to graduate yet this was the only thing that held me up, a lack of instructors! And that's when I decided that I had enough of Morgan State..... So I Transferred!
I loved my HBCU, but I could not tolerate their setbacks any longer! they had too many teachers in my major that did not know what they were teaching, and many of them had no industry experience in the field I was majoring in. Many of the students at Morgan care only about one thing Parties, sex, and weed! when class was over, it was over! and then back to smoking weed in the dorm. and yet once we walk across the stage where supposed to be ready to take on Corporate America. but yet, some go back home to their parents unemployed, some end up taking a job at a place like rite aid, and some become academic advisers and faculty members at the institution they graduated from.
I've seen it way to many times at a School like Morgan State, you stay for seven years and then you graduate only to come out unprepared and not ready to work! My family members have pushed me into going to Morgan Simply because it was their Alma mater.
I did want to transfer to Howard University but I would have lost credits. when I thought about it, I would have been transferring for the wrong reasons. one of those reasons was simply because Howard was known for its legacy of creating Doctors, lawyers, and Engineers. not the fact that I wanted an education but because I wanted an education from a black school that was well known.
Even before I applied to Howard University I knew it was a party school and they were known for their homecomings but their educational programs in the brochures still took a back seat to "THE YARD" I was obsessed with Howard to the point that I would have done anything just to get in there. but in reality Howard was no different than Morgan State! only difference was it was in DC.
Howard Was in the center of a place known as SHAW and Georgia Ave. everybody knows that northwest DC was one of the most roughest places in DC that you could ever pass through, let alone walk. I had heard stories from my professor that Howard students were not allowed to wear their paraphernalia off campus because many people around the area disliked Howard students and they ran the chance of getting shot or robbed! they were disliked in the same respects that the black bourgeois was disrespected. and Howard has always been seen as a threat to the neighbors that lived and reside in Le Driot Park. one of the many reasons why I decided not to transfer to Howard was because the school lacks the technology needed to be prepared for the job market. Howard was nothing more than a campus that prided itself on the Divine nine and their famous alumni.
Howard as opposed to Morgan rested upon their traditions while still lacking the tools needed to prepare a student to enter the workforce, I'm not saying Howard is a bad school but like many other HBCU's its lacks the proper tools! and diversity is also an important element that is still not embraced at campuses like Howard.
If you just graduated from an HBCU and all you have been around is a bunch of black students during your entire matriculation through college wouldn't it be a disservice to you if you went in to the workforce and all you saw were Latinos, Asians, and whites? and yet an HBCU is teaching you to be just what they prepared you to be "BLACK" and to see everything in this world only as Black and white.
when you go into the workplace, everybody is not just a color! they are individuals just like us, and when you attend an HBCU you only cut yourself off from a worldly perspective. Places like NYU, Harvard, MIT, Yale, and other racially diverse colleges embrace diversity and I believe that it is time for HBCU's to drop these Afrocentric traditions and embrace multiculturalism for the 21st century.
we are no longer in the civil rights movement anymore. we are still fighting for fundamental things in America. but how are we going to fight for those things, if we have an education that can't even compete with the ivy leagues.
at a Predominately white institution, you will still run into racism, and racial conflict. but this is reality! there is nothing new about racism, it is everywhere but if it is a school that has the fundamental tools to provide me with a better education, then there I will go! if James Meredith could fight racial segregation to get admitted into "Ole MISS" then I can go to a white institution and still get a good education because someone broke those doors open in order for me to have a better opportunity for me to succeed. if I only went to a college simply because it was a black school, then I would only be adding to my own disenfranchisement as a black person.
If we look at President Obama we can see that he got his education from schools like Occidental College and Columbia University. many of our black leaders got their education from HBCU's and yet they still see racism and play the race card every chance they get!
Rev. Jesse Jackson got his education from North Carolina A&M University and yet he has made inflammatory remarks against Jewish people by referring to them as Hymie's! and he has also made remarks against Obama threatening to castrate him! and yet he is suppose to be bringing people together. HBCU's are still living in the civil rights era.
I'm not saying that Black Colleges should get rid of their heritage but it should be redefined to embrace other cultures. One thing that HBCU's can do away with is Greek letter Organizations! they are nothing more than a bunch of cliques that go around stomping and shouting and yelling chants and calls. these are the same people that call you their brother or sister yet they will make you bend over and "take wood" for the sake of some stupid greek letters. or if you don't your a "SKATER"! HBCU's need to put more priority on education instead of BANDS, and football games! HBCU's need to readjust their priorities. because in the end, there not about an education there about reminding you that you are black!
and we wonder why places like Morris Brown College can't hardly stay open!
you wonder why we have things like the UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND
Because these schools are barely able to stay open without the proper funding.
White Institutions remain opened because their alumni give back to the institution, they come back and donate large sums of money and a building named after them!
A majority of HBCU's are funded by the federal goverment!
things like the freedmen's Bureau were created to help slaves after the civil war
And HBCU's were created to Help newly freed slaves get an education, and yet they bare the names of white men who created these institutions simply because slaves could not go to Havard, Yale, Or Penn State.
reverand Lyttleton Morgan (Morgan State) General Oliver Otis Howard (Howard University) and Sammuel Chapman Armstrong (Hampton University)
Their were many purposes for HBCU's
1. to train free slaves to become Ministers
2. to train free slaves to become good field laborers
3. to train them in the liberal arts
4. and to train them in vocational fields
this was the main mission of HBCU's during that time and HBCU's will now have to be redfined if it has any chance of surviving well into the 21st century.
we are now living in a new age, and we need to do away with Land grant colleges that were founded for the purpose of training its students to be farmers in Agriculture when instead it should be redefined as a school that trains its students for Green Technology or Green Engineering.
If I had a son or a daughter, I would not push them to go to just an HBCU simply because it is A BLACK College. I would advise them to look at the overall picture of what they are getting into. I would tell them to look at the school that would provide them with the best education to prepare them for the real world and not just to be BLACK! I would tell them to go to a school where people respect you as an individual and not beat you down simply because you want to belong to a greek letter society. I would tell them to go to a school that puts academics as a #1 priority over things like athletics, greeks, and bands.
If my sons and daughters go away to college I want to make sure they don't come back to me in a pine box! and I want to make sure Im paying for their tution instead of their Funeral Arrangements.
I want to make sure my sons and daughters don't lose an eye or hearing in their ears simply because they wanted to be apart of an organization. I want to make sure they can be able to sit in a chair without "taking wood" across the backside.
I want my sons and daughters to know that they should be LEADERS and you don't need a pact to follow when you are your own leader.
When you decide to join or pledge a Greek letter organization you give up one of the most important things that makes you the person you are... Your individuality! once you join, you belong to them! so you eat, sleep, and think it!
that is the only thing you have on your mind!
and yet once your in, you will see who is a real brother or sister to you then!
you will see who will have your back! you will see who cares about you!
Because in the end, you wanted to be apart of their organization!
HBCU's are no longer relvant to this new era because they still lack proper funding!
ever since I told my friends and family that I transffered to Towson University. I was met with harsh crticism and have been labled a sellout and an Uncle tom. yet I still continue to say to myself, would I continue to stand by Morgan for its lack of resorceses, lack of instructors and outdated buildings?, or would I choose to go to a school that would be able to prepare me for the real world?
I deserved a Proper education! I know I will be met with challenges at Towson but I know they have a decent Libarary where the books and sources are always updated and there is someone around the corner to help me prep for a test!
Morgan offered no pathway to Graduation! and if I had continued to stay at that school, they would have continued to rob me of an opportunity to compete with people who went to the ivy league and regionally diverse schools.
when I was in high school, I had a teacher who was a graduate of Johns Hopkins University when she ask me what college I wanted to go to I told her i wanted to go to Havard University!
she was proud of me when I told her that because I was aiming for better and I wouldn't settle
when I told my parents I want to go to NYU they cussed me out and told me I was going to Morgan State!
To major in Engineering!
so to conclude, I would like to say to always tell your childern to always be yourself and never under any circumstances degrate yourself for the sake of a group! I was in many groups around campus and yet when I spoke out about certain issues I was repirmanded for it! and everytime i was force to apoligize for it I felt marginalized for my own convictions and opinions. so that's when I decided to leave the group!
no one has the right to silence me for my opinions, even if they offend some. I will never put myself in a position to be a pawn for an organization! PERIOD!
"Remember you Represent an entity bigger than yourself"!-S.M.O.O.T.H MR. Anthony Lampkin
what I realized after this quote was said to me, is that when you join an organization you become apart of them! and everything you do outside that organization reflects on them!
I gave up my individuality for a semester so that I can join a group of men who were known around campus as S.M.O.O.T.H. yet the reasons why I signed up were for community service and yet they were just a group of people standing around throwing events and meetings. I chose to leave the group prematurley because of a stunt they pulled in order to teach me a lesson!
I was invited by a Fellow S.M.O.O.T.H brother to perform spoken word on stage at one of their events. and yet one of the coordinators for the event did not even give me a chance to do my mic check properly and so he cut me off since I did not audition for the show. yet I was still able to go on stage since I was a S.M.O.O.T.H Brother! they had not heard my works before so when i performed my poem I was quickly snatched off stage for the content of my poem and then the next week I was forced to stand in front of a room full of my S.M.O.O.T.H brothers and apologize to them for simply being an artist and expressing myself through spoken word. yet they wanted me to perform!
I learned many things from this, I drop my guard as a man because I was willing to put myself out there for the sake of a group, I stripped myself of what made me a unique individual in order to join an organization, and the ones that claimed they were my brothers were not really my brothers at all because a real brother doesn't shame another for expressing himself! and a real brother doesn't judge a person by the poems he writes.
to make a long story short. Parents always tell your child to embrace their individuality and never force your childern to go to just a black school because your child could very well end up just like Robert Champion.
we send are kids to schools like this everyday to get an education but yet most comeout learning the bare minimum that could get them a decent job.
Robert Champion should be a wake-up call to us just like the death of emmitt till was a wake up call to the civil rights movement!
we need to think about and question what type of institutions we are sending our childern to everyday! we need to push our childern to consider more racially diverse schools. we need to send them to schools that have up to date technology and not just a black school simply because you need to appreciate your heritage.
Florida A&M University will probely go on to do their homecomings and band shows while the mother of Robert Champion has to live with the fact that she has no son simply because he was hazed to death!
JUST SAY NO TO HAZING!
and Just say no to HBCU's
