SUNO/UNO merger bills die, pulled before vote

23rd May 2011   ·   0 Comments

House Speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, told his cash in a check colleagues in Baton Rouge Wednesday that he is giving up on a proposal to merge Southern University at New Orleans with the University of New Orleans, a plan that had sparked fierce debate and protests from Black legislators and SUNO supporters.

Two days after delaying a House vote because two legislators who supported the merger bill were absent, Tucker conceded he doesn’t have the votes and doesn’t expect to be able to get them this legislative session. He says he won’t push forward with a House floor vote on the proposed consolidation.

Wednesday’s decision by Tucker to scrap the merger bill represents a major defeat to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who first proposed the merger in January. Jindal’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tucker says he notified the governor’s office of his decision, and the administration agreed.

Tucker called it a “sad day” for education, while the Legislature’s Black Caucus praised the decision to scrap the merger.

“We are very pleased,” said Black Caucus chairwoman and state Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, while announcing the deal. “We are committed to working with him (House Speaker Jim Tucker) very closely on working on these cooperative endeavor agreements.”

Governor Jindal’s Office released a statement saying, “We continue to believe the status quo for students in New Orleans is unacceptable and we’re not going to give up on our fight to improve educational opportunities. We make no apologies for pushing big, ambitious and bold ideas to improve our state. We’re going to continue to take on the tough issues.”

Tucker said all but one of the 55 House GOP members backed the merger. Rep. Rickey Nowlin, R-Natchitoches, who now has a majority-Black district, was the lone holdout.

State Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, was the only member of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus to support the merger.

Tucker would have needed to pick up at least 15 votes from white Democrats, no small feat since a number of those Democrats hail from districts with a sizable number of Black constituents.

“I think SUNO is in deep trouble,” House Speaker Jim Tucker told payday loans chicago il The Advocate. “I always viewed this legislation, in a way, as saving SUNO.

“We’ll still have low graduation rates, and we’ll still have limited resources that do not allow either of the institutions to succeed in the way we want them to,” Tucker added.

The Louisiana Senate threw out the SUNO/UNO merger bill Thursday — a day after House Speaker Jim Tucker conceded that he didn’t have the votes to push the bill forward. While the SUNO/UNO merger proposal is essentially dead for the time being, moves are still being made to move UNO out of the LSU System and into the University of Louisiana System.

“We worked our butts off to make sure this merger didn’t happen for the sake of SUNO and UNO,” Rep. Austin Badon (D-New Orleans), chair of the House Education Committee and a SUNO faculty member, told FOX 8 News Thursday. He says it’s unfair to compare SUNO’s academic performance to other universities because the HBCU still waiting on critical resources.

“The first floors of many buildings are not fixed, [there is] no library, buildings that are standing there just shuttered,” Badon said. “Within the last year, Katrina water was just pumped out of the pool at SUNO.”

Randolph Scott, president of the SUNO Alumni Association, said there is still a lot of work that remains to be done at SUNO. “We still have issues with our university that have not been resolved yet,” Scott told The Louisiana Weekly. “We have 22 courses that need to be returned to us. Our infrastructure still needs to be repaired. Our buildings need to be repaired fully and returned back to the students for teaching purposes. Our library is not back up.

“We also still need to deal with the way that our graduation rate is being assessed by the state,” Scott continued. “The system is flawed and unfair. When you have 442 graduates and only 14 are counted, there’s definitely a problem.”

The problem, SUNO supporters say, is the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, which does not count students who begin their college matriculation at other income tax benefit on personal loan universities but ultimately transfer to schools like SUNO to complete their college matriculation. IPEDS, which calculates graduation rates for the nation’s institutions of higher learning, bases a college or university’s graduation rate on the number of full-time students who earn their degrees within six years.

An effort is already under way to reach out to IPEDS officials to tweak the methods used to measure graduation rates. At some point, that effort may include enlisting the help of Louisiana’s Congressional delegation and national education officials.

“We have actually begun that interaction,” SUNO Chancellor Dr. Victor Ukpolo told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. “At the NAFEO (National Association For Equal Opportunity in Higher Education) meeting in Washington, DC a month ago, that was a topic of discussion. We are going to do our best as a group of HBCU presidents to get IPEDS officials to revisit this measure of graduation rates.

“Even though it was originally configured just to be used to ensure that people do not stay on the financial aid process more than 12 semesters, it is now being used as a performance measure contrary to what it was originally intended to be used for,” Ukpolo added. “We’re going to be visiting with the federal government and talking to people about possibly looking at that again.”

Randolph Scott thanked a number of groups who fought for SUNO Thursday, including the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, members of the SUNO Alumni Association, WBOK radio station, the Louisiana Democratic Party, W.C. Johnson (host of Cox Cable Access show “Our Story”), and The Louisiana Weekly.

“Now the struggle continues,” Scott told The Louisiana Weekly. “We have to get our house in order. …We need to strengthen the SUNO administration and get administrators at SUNO that can build the university and fight for the university so that we will not find ourselves in this position again in the future.”

One merger critic said Thursday that Wednesday’s news should not convince those who believe in SUNO to stop fighting for the city’s only public HBCU. “SUNO has long been neglected by government and education officials and best payday loans michigan will continue to struggle to get what it needs to thrive unless those who support the institution continue to stand up for it,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a former Internet radio talk-show host and congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “There are still a myriad of challenges facing SUNO including underfunding, administrative neglect, rebuilding roadblocks and the standards used to measure graduation rates that Gov. Jindal used to justify the merger in the first place.

“While it’s tempting to celebrate SUNO’s victory in this very critical battle, it’s more important to do everything we can to ensure that SUNO wins the war for its survival and achieves some degree of growth and prosperity that prevents this from happening again. The only way to make that happen is through a sustained commitment to supporting SUNO and old-fashioned organizing and hard work.”

The Senate bill’s author, state Sen. Conrad Appel (R-Metairie), said Thursday that he is still a strong supporter of the SUNO-UNO merger, but threw out the plan after realizing he simply didn’t have the votes to pass it.

“I reserve the right to revisit the topic in a year or so,” Appel said. “We’ll see.”

“I know all of us are going to work very hard to ensure that SUNO will become the best school that it can become,” Rep. Patricia Smith said.

“I’m very proud that the overwhelming majority of both the New Orleans Delegation and the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus beat back this divisive, ill-conceived, and rushed merger plan. There is no doubt we need higher education reform in this state, however the proposed SUNO and UNO merger was not the answer we need,” Congressman Cedric Richmond (LA-02) told The Louisiana Weekly Friday. “I do, however, support moving UNO to the University of Louisiana System, which is the sole purpose of the bill now.”

“Today marks the beginning of a transformation in urban higher education for the Southern University System and the city of New Orleans,” Southern University System President Dr. Ronald Mason Jr. said Thursday. “Reason prevailed and Southern University at New Orleans (SUNO) will continue a legacy of payday loans for income support serving the educational and cultural needs of the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area…

“The future of New Orleans depends on SUNO,” Mason continued. “New Orleans needs a premier urban education option for students to succeed and SUNO is well on its way. This past spring semester, SUNO achieved record enrollment; embraced the higher GRAD Act standards; is working in and partnering with high schools, and is serving its students and New Orleans better every day. We will continue working diligently to restore the campus of SUNO, providing our students with the facilities and resources that they rightfully deserve.”

“We expect to have significant activity now on our campus regarding the renovation of many of our buildings,” SUNO Chancellor Dr. Victor Ukpolo told The Louisiana Weekly. Ukpolo said he met Friday with one of the architects hired to renovate the Lakefront campus.

Randolph Scott said he was disappointed that House Speaker Jim Tucker and Senator Conrad Appel would author bills that would have significantly impacted SUNO without first gathering firsthand knowledge of the HBCU.

“We never spoke with Appel or Tucker,” Scott told The Louisiana Weekly. “These are lawmakers who wanted to make changes to this university but never set foot on SUNO’s campus to speak to the Faculty Senate president or anyone from the Alumni Association.

“They have been speaking to UNO’s Faculty Senate, Alumni Association and its Foundation, but they’ve never spoken with us,” Scott continued. “Yet they want to tell us what’s good for us. It’s like the master telling the slave what’s good for him. They want to keep a master-slave relationship going well into the 21st century.

“it’s unfortunate that we have public officials in positions of authority that have power over the lives and destinies of a group of African Americans but fail to communicate with the stakeholders in this process. That’s disappointing and insulting to me personally and as president of the SUNO Alumni Association.

“The struggle is still there.”

This article was originally published in the May 23, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper