"
Dear friend,
Federal
funding for minority-serving institutions expired on September 30th,
2019. This lapse in funding harms HBCUs across the country, including
Virginia Union University, Hampton University, Virginia State
University, Norfolk State University, and Virginia University of
Lynchburg. These schools rely on this funding to operate and improve
student services and academic programs from counseling to tutoring,
mentoring, and STEM and career training programs. Without it, the
continued success of America's HBCUs is in jeopardy.
Fortunately,
we have a bipartisan bill on the table - the FUTURE Act - that would
renew this expired funding. The House passed this bill unanimously 52
days ago and it has the support of the White House, yet the Senate has
failed to take it up. It's time for Republican leadership to hold a vote
on this legislation so we can pass it immediately.
Minority-serving
institutions, most of which do not have significant endowments and face
unique fiscal challenges, count on these federal dollars. If we don't
pass this bill, critical programs at these schools are at risk of being
cut and individual students will suffer.
We have a solution: Let's get this right and pass the bipartisan FUTURE Act.
Right. He's not talking about funding for accredited colleges and universities, generally, which most taxpayers would probably say is already sufficient. He's talking about special funding for these five universities that happen to be historically Black or majority-Black. And I am in favor of these schools keeping their special history and traditions. I'm even in favor of their keeping their majority-Black atmosphere, so when some 18-year-old slacker who's never had to learn how to study in high school goes to university and is nonplussed by having to prepare for classes, this kid can't say "They're making it hard for me because I'm Black." Learning how to study is hard for teen slackers of any ethnic flavor but, when the teachers are Black too, teen slackers who happen to be Black are more likely just to learn how to study, already, without the "because I'm Black" sprezz. There is no color difference among brains. There are differences among high schools that put some ethnic-minority and low-income students at a substantial disadvantage; historically, Virginia high schools have tended to be among those that put students from all backgrounds at an advantage relative to students from neighboring states, but even Virginia high school graduates still have to adjust from having everything spoon-fed to them in the classroom to being expected to learn some things from their own reading before they walk into the classroom.
When I used to attend Seventh-Day Adventist churches they used to have special fundraising drives in aid of Oakwood College, which is also historically Black, though not in Virginia. I used to give money to those drives. I used to see people from every nation on Earth giving money to those drives. So, if the Senator's bill to collect special money for our Historically Black Uni's were not bipartisan and did not bag a few million tax dollars, I'm pretty confident that fundraising tours by these schools' bands, drama groups, sports teams, etc., would raise money for these schools too.
Either way, the schools are going to get money, and preserve their traditions; and there's nothing unfortunate about that. I think it's a fine thing.
What's not so fine is just how bipartisan the movement to take this money out of federal tax funds has become. The Republican Party's reason for existing is to question the Democratic Party's historic tendency to imagine that the only solution to any problem is to throw federal tax money at it. R's are supposed to hold out for schools to raise more of their own funding through alumni donations and student activity. But the printed piece of R junkmail was urging me to vote for a local R because he's "helped secure more federal funding for schools in our district..."
Er um, which district's that, again? Junkmail originated in Richmond!
R's are supposed to remind D's that even though education is a good thing and we want it to be available to every child who is willing to take it, making schools raise their own funds is good for the schools, forcing them to do a decent job of teaching students to do something for which somebody is willing to pay as a result of observing what the students have learned.
I was lucky; Virginia's White-washing of biracial families out here in the Point was philosophically disgusting, but it did give us access to a choice of colleges that was not always available to Black people. So, my parents wanted me to go to a church college, and since I skipped through high school at the age of sixteen I had little choice about that. My church college received limited federal funding. (Many thought it ought to have received even less.) As a result, tuition was much higher than it was at the state universities that offered equally good or better academic education. My parents thought single-sex dorms with curfews, and the right to pray out loud and quote the Bible in the classroom, were worth the extra fees. Not that we could afford it, but what people were telling 16-year-olds with what were called "equivalency diplomas," back then, was "If people waited till they could afford it nobody'd ever go to college. Go now, then get a job that'll pay enough that you can afford it."
So I went. My parents managed to pay back the loan before the interest got out of hand; I managed to pay them back in floor-mopping, errand-running, and letter-writing after Dad went blind. And I was lucky again--as most students are: I had a marketable talent. I wasn't a star-quality singer, but I was good enough to sing for my supper. I travelled with the school choir and drama group and sang in fundraisers in aid of the school. I travelled with the student ministers and sang in churches in aid of their and my tuition. Eventually I had a few fans, raised a little money, and released an album of my own.
It is hard to imagine an historically Black university that wasn't known for its student musical performances. Hampton, especially. Offhand, the only thing I remember having read about Hampton was how their choral performances used to impress the whole East Coast. Granted, universities don't raise money by music alone, but...why have I not read about a Hampton choir performance more recently?
Then from the church college I went to its affiliated university, where I continued to sing. I was also put to work in the school wood shop, which supplied a big mail-order company with furniture at that time. The wood shop had been advised to hire a few girls, so I was the one they put in the finishing section. University social life revolved around clubs and, although some of the clubs seemed to be social groups that didn't do much beyond hanging out together, those clubs were dismissed as being for sad apples. Anyone with anything to offer was invited to join one of the clubs that did something for the school so, while under consideration for the Scholars, which was the top group and which I never got into, I travelled with a lesser group who organized Christian sing-alongs and devotions in hospitals, nursing homes, the jail, the soup kitchen, and other places where people didn't get to church services. The club had a tiny fund of our own for needy members, and raised some funds for the church and the university.
Later I went to Berea College, which was a bigger school, more demanding. Berea didn't put me back on the road as a singer; they had teenagers for that. Berea used older students to write research papers, help with experiments, do lectures...I actually compiled a supplementary textbook. In addition to the obligatory hours of more menial student labor, mopping floors, showing people how to use computers, and guarding the science museum on weekends. (One of Berea's traditions was that even the faculty and administration had to do that sort of thing for a couple of days every term. You moved on to more prestigious tasks, but you never moved beyond menial labor.)
I think it's not that adults shouldn't hand out money to schools, but hello, what are the schools doing besides racking up the price of tuition every year and whining for more federal tax funding? I think more schools should be more like the church schools and Berea. If not 100% self-funding they should be positively competing to get closer to that goal. Hello, young people, college is not just where you go to sneak out and do things your parents told you not to do; it ought to be where you start giving something back to the larger society that have thrust elementary and high school education upon you. College is where you may not be ready to write your bestselling book or do your groundbreaking research, yet, but you can sort mail, or baby-sit, or sing.
I'm proud of my local man's successes but I have to wonder to what extent he and his Republican sponsors have gone off track. From D's, begging for more federal funding may be all that's expected. From R's, I would have hoped for boasts about making schools and students more self-funding.
There are those who don't like what Booker T. Washington, of Tuskegee University, wrote about "service learning." They accuse him of having suggested that the purpose of educating Black youth was to make them higher-class domestic help for White people. I don't remember where in his book he said that; I remember more about the idea of students self-funding by doing student-labor-type work for anyone who might be able to hire them. Well, it's been a few years since I read his book, anyway...twenty-some years. But why should this web site promote a Tuskegee writer ahead of a Berea writer? When the Amazon links return to this site, which they will, the link here will be to a book by Carter G. Woodson, who argued that the first step for any disadvantaged group of people--students, ethnic groups, whomever--was to recognize how much they already had to offer, how much they could do for themselves and for one another.
And I want to be clear about this. The e-mail was about majority-Black schools. Majority-White schools need money too. White students need money too. And they deserve help, too. And they, too, need to be thinking about ways to rely less on federal tax funding and more on self-funding...both the schools, as schools, and the students, as students.
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