Merger supporters claim majority- Black college does not die

15th April 2011   ·   0 Comments

Merger supporters claim majority-Black college does not die

SUNO-UNO merger opponents fear death of HBCUs

By Christopher Tidmore

Contributing Writer

News that Governor Bobby Jindal planned to push for a single university in New Orleans, effectively ending SUNO, has polarized political opinions on racial lines like few issues in recent decades Several white Democrats have joined with Republican legislators in calling for a single state-funded source for higher education in the city, while the African-American community has feared the loss of a historically Black college.  Particularly, Black leaders warned that Jindal’s plan could backfire, costing the state millions in federal HBCU funds if Southern University at New Orleans ceases to be an independent school.

Race has so colored the debate on both sides, that prior to the Louisiana Board of Regents vote, Board member Robert Bruno took offense to comments made by a presenter comparing the current New Orleans higher education system to slavery. Bruno called the comments “ridiculous,” which spurred a verbal back-and-forth between Bruno and the crowd. The exchange underscored the communications gap that has existed between the two sides in the merger debate. Before their 9-6 vote supporting the concept of single university back in March, Louisiana Board of Regent member Ed Antie said that in no way was the state’s governing board for higher education trying to eliminate an historically Black college.

“I challenge you to follow us and see how we interact with universities,” Regent Ed Antie stated. “This board does care. We do care.” Noting that the proposal -for which he and eight other Regents board members voted-simply creates a single administrative structure, not a single university, Antie maintained that a majority-Black University would continue at the current campus of Southern University at New Orleans.

SUNO Chancellor Dr. Victor Ukpolo was less certain that it would be business as usual for SUNO, as Antie suggests.

“We have no idea as to how the creation of a single administrative board would affect these institutions,” he said Friday.  “However, our view is that SUNO should remain part of the Southern University System due to the shared mission of all institutions belonging to it, and the unique student body that we have historically served.  ”

Under the Regents plan, SUNO would become the Metropolitan college component of a University of Greater New Orleans, with the current UNO acting as the senior campus with a higher entrance requirement and Delgado as a community college with no application requirements. SUNO would stand in between.  In fact, preliminary details of the legislative act that would codify the Regents’ decision does – according to its author – aim to create a new, “two-track” system of higher education in New Orleans.  Republican State Senator Conrad Appel of Metairie explained that the first track would “provide a world-class education” for undergraduates who are fully prepared for college without need for remedial classes.  The latter would cater to “nontraditional” students who want to go to college but lack the necessary prerequisites – primarily those who currently attend Delgado and SUNO.

“It will be a system which is designed differently than any other system you’ve ever seen, in this state at least,” Appel outlined. It will be constructed “for those students who need the extra assistance because we failed them in high school.”

Appel pledged not to harm any students in near or long term, and admitted that accreditation issues still have not been resolved, though he expressed confidence that there will be no major obstacles.

SUNO Chancellor Dr. Victor Ukpolo told The Louisiana Weekly that he believes that a merger of any kind would impede SUNO’s ability to carry out its historic  mission as a public Black university.

“SUNO’s status as an HBCU will be altered if the merger proposal succeeds,” he said.

“This represents the opinion of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and President Ron Mason’s comments during the last meeting of the Louisiana Board of Regents. As such, SUNO stands to lose millions of dollars which have traditionally been granted to us due to our status as an HBCU. SUNO is currently updating its economic impact study that was published a few years ago, which notes that for every $1 the state invests in SUNO, Louisiana gets a $7 return.”

While he conceded that no one is 100 percent certain of how SUNO’s status as an HBCU and its federal funding would be impacted by a merger of the New Orleans schools, Southern University System president Dr. Ronald Mason said that everything he has learned thus far suggests that any changes to the governance of SUNO would significantly impact the Black institution’s ability to serve an already-underserved group of Black college students and potentially signal a death knell for the Southern University System as a whole and HBCUs across the nation.

Mason spent part of last week in Washington, DC, at the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education meeting with other HBCU leaders and White House officials concerned about the plight of historically Black colleges and universities and the ever-growing list of challenges they face.  Governor Jindal currently is pushing for a two-track merger of his own on the University governance level. Appel’s bill would put the UGNO structure under the purview of the University of Louisiana System. However, another plan that the governor currently advocates, drawn up by the Council for a Better Louisiana, also pushes to create a single higher education board to replace the four existing higher education governing boards.

Reporting to the commissioner of higher education would be four assistant commissioners who would have authority over different academic areas such as research or regional colleges.

The major defense of the UNO-SUNO-Delgado merger plan, that since the three components must still establish separate education missions, they are separate schools, has drawn derision from SUNO students and administrators – as well as a few members of the Board.

Regent Demetrius Sumner, the Board’s student representative from Southern-Baton Rouge, asked the panel the purpose of the UGNO “box” drawn around the urban research and metropolitan components on the study’s diagram for Alternative B, the proposal later approved by the board-and essentially the plan that Appel seeks to enact in his legislation.

Sumner said he asked the question to bring up one point – the box still identifies a merger. “If you take those two things and marry it, it’s a merger,” Sumner said, which elicited applause at the March meeting.  The motion passed on March 15, 2011 after two substitute motions failed, one of which included making no recommendations to the Regents at all.

The Louisiana Weekly asked Dr. Ukpolo and Dr. Mason Friday if they might file a legal challenge to the method used to quantify successful graduation rates at Louisiana colleges and universities.

“We believe that it’s important for the public to know that the U.S.  Department of Education’s Inte­grated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fails to capture the true performance of institutions like SUNO, whose mission is primarily open-access driven,” Ukpolo told The Louisiana Weekly.

“During the recent annual meeting of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) that was held in Washington, D.C., the consensus among HBCU presidents was that IPEDs’ method of computing graduation rates is outdated. For many HBCUs like SUNO, it takes students in the neighborhood of nine years to graduate instead of six, the latter which represents IPEDS benchmark for determining a university’s graduation rate.”

Dr. Mason pointed out that SUNO’s graduation rate is actually better than that of LSU-Alexandria, which currently has a four percent graduation rate.  Asked why Gov. Jindal would target SUNO for criticism while ignoring LSU-Alexandria’s lower graduation rate, Mason told The Louisiana Weekly, “The numbers speak for themselves.”

Other SUNO supporters have asked why the state would go through the long, arduous process of merging the New Orleans schools if so little would be changed as a result.

Regent Antie dared the crowd at last month’s merger proposal vote to walk in the Board’s footsteps, and Victor Stelly pointed out how the Board isn’t as high and mighty as other state agencies because the “pay is zero, our perks are zero, and we don’t get football tickets.”

The Regent’s proposal, reflected in Appel’s Bill, would pave the way for a “University of Greater New Orleans.” However, to pass, Appel’s bill must earn two-thirds of legislators’ approval in both Houses, a daunting task considering the unified opposition of the Black Caucus to the plan.

Additional reporting by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund W. Lewis.