Morehouse Pride: Stronger Together or Mission Diluted?

Since we’re nearing the end of Pride Month, I wanted to share this IG post from my alma mater, Morehouse College. It triggered a reaction that reminds me we’re not entirely out of the woods when it comes to “woke” or DEI influences in academia.

Via Morehouse IG

Here’s the caption that accompanied the post:

The House is Stronger Together.

This Pride Month, Morehouse College celebrates the diversity of experiences, perspectives, and identities that enrich our community and strengthen our collective pursuit of excellence.

As an institution grounded in the values of dignity, respect, belonging, and leadership, we recognize the contributions of LGBTQIA+ students, alumni, faculty, staff, and supporters whose lives and work help shape The House. We affirm the importance of creating a community where every individual is valued, every voice is heard, and every person has the opportunity to thrive.

Happy #Pride2026.

'Let's go Brandon' to speak at Morehouse College commencement

Morehouse College 

And there are some objections to this as you will see from this recent NBC Chicago article:

Morehouse College is set to announce that President Joe Biden will deliver its commencement address on May 19, but some faculty members have raised concerns about the decision, according to two people familiar with the matter and an email to faculty members reviewed by NBC News.

“This week, I received an inquiry from concerned faculty about rumors they were hearing about President Biden’s selection as the 2024 Commencement speaker,” Kendrick Brown, Morehouse College’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, wrote in the email to faculty members Friday.

Brown said he would convene a virtual meeting Thursday “to extend an opportunity for faculty with different perspectives on the selection of our Commencement speaker to ask questions and make comments.” He said students would also engage with college President David Thomas.

...

A Morehouse faculty member told NBC News administrators are believed to be concerned that faculty members will join students in protest of Biden during the ceremony.

The pushback against leadership’s decision comes amid increasing protests on college campuses over Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The protests since the war began in October have already forced Biden, and other top administration officials, to dramatically scale back appearances at college campuses.

Ah, OK.

I don't believe President Joe Biden is particularly popular anyway. This will give the school necessary attention as probably happened when President Obama delivered his commencement address years ago.

However, with that conflict going on in Gaza, now I see why the protests. What's popular with students on college campuses is protesting in favor of the Palestinians and against the Israeli responses to Hamas' attacks. 

Timcast IRL: New lockdowns coming?

 

[VIDEO] Tim Pool discusses the news of new mask mandates coming out of the Atlanta HBCU, Morris Brown College and within the movie company Lionsgate. Here's more out of Morris Brown - school is just about starting later this month down there - from CBS News:

Atlanta-based Morris Brown College has announced that the school is reinstating its Covid mask mandate for the next two weeks as a result of positive cases at the Atlanta University Center.

The historically black college posted a note on its official Instagram account noting that the protocols would be in effect for the next 14 days. This includes a requirement for mask-wearing by students and employees, physical distancing, contact tracing, and other significant efforts to reduce the spread of Covid-19 among the population on the Atlanta campus.

There is a new variant that they're concerned about 

Medical experts have indicated that they are watching new variants like EG.5, which the World Health Organization has determined is a variant of interest.

So some of the mitigations are common sense although some might debate that wearing masks might not be entirely effective. Social distancing and washing hands seems to be the most common sense thing to do, everyday. That should be normal.

However, I'm remembering the effects of lockdowns in 2020. And I like Tim Pool's layman's explanation. We hear about these other variants the alpha variant probably was lethal though it incapacitates hosts to the point where they can't spread it. The variants that we were supposed to be concerned about after the initial bend the curve through 2021 were probably not as strong as the alpha variant though they might be more contagious.

Regardless I hope that there is someone in the public health or public administration field who are looking at 2020 and proposing better responses to a similar contagion. And as they discussed two weeks to bend the curve for a virus we don't understand, felt prudent at that time. However, the more this continued the more problematic it would become. I would hope we wouldn't do that again.

Thought, allow me to add some of this news is coming out not too far out from a Presidential Election. I'm keeping that in mind if I see more stories like this.

Prof. Tobe Johnson's celebration of life #Morehouse

I didn't get to watch the livestream of Prof. Tobe Johnson's memorial service which was held on campus this past Friday. So for those of you who are part of the Morehouse community and certainly those of you who may have been his students in the political science department I'm sharing this with you if you just so happened to have missed this.

Prof. Tobe Johnson R.I.P.

 When I first started this blog I had a class with Prof. Tobe Johnson and to be honest he had faded me in this course once before. The concepts he expected his students to know to be honest was going over my head, and once I became determined to understand the concepts I had an aha moment and so did he. He knew I got it, and smooth sailing since then and took two other classes with him until finally graduating in 2009.

So I've taken with him "grammar of politics" or scope & methods of political science, urban management and policy analysis, and finally financial management of local government. The one thing I had failed to do then was take him for senior thesis. By the time I graduated seniors in pol. sci. didn't have to take senior thesis, but do a capstone project at the end of their matriculation.

What I can say today is that I survived Dr. Johnson and I actually survived Morehouse College. To be honest it is still surprising to me even now. Just wish I picked his brain more.

Howard students can't name a war the US had fought in

[VIDEO] I'm sorry to have missed this video from Campus Reform from the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC (a prestigious HBCU).

Found this via Marathon Pundit where I commented that HBCU students shouldn't be insulated from the significant events of the world. It turns out I was a tad off base.

Many of these students don't believe any war fought by America is justified. Some cited the Civil War - it helps that Howard was created after the conflict which freed the slaves. Otherwise many of these students are really just anti-war.

The 2nd World War comes up but many students can't even justify why we must fight the evil regime of Nazi Germany at the time.

Creating a new Atlanta University out of many...

 Anyone who either currently attends or has attended Clark-Atlanta University, Spelman College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Morehouse College would have something to say about this proposal to merge the schools of the Atlanta University Center into a new Atlanta University.

With the recent events of so many struggling HBCUs such as Bennett College and Paine College, the AU Center should be seriously considering ways to sustain a more cohesive institution to withstand these types of economic and financial shortfalls.

Clark College and Atlanta University merged out of necessity. Atlanta University, as a standalone graduate school, suffered declining enrollment and its budget was under exigency. Clark was the most logical choice and the school that would benefit the most from a consolidation with Atlanta University.

Fourteen years later in 2002, Morris Brown lost its accreditation due to financial aid fraud, massive debt and embezzlement of public funds. In 2009, Clark Atlanta University was forced to fire 55 faculty members in response to what was deemed a budgetary and enrollment emergency. In the past few years Morehouse College suffered declining enrollment, budget shortfalls, a Moody credit rating drop and declines in national rankings of best black colleges.

These issues did not arise without cause. After the Civil Rights Act of 1968, schools became increasingly desegregated and this in turn made for more competition for the historically black colleges. With the Atlanta University Center schools operating independently, they make themselves increasingly more vulnerable.

The Atlanta University Center, with the right guidance, planning and strategy (not to mention sizable funding) could become the largest most prestigious black college in the country. If they could forego hubris, ego and status in order to look to the future, they could become a new Atlanta University that stands shoulder to shoulder with other city named schools such as New York University, Boston University and University of Chicago.

It would be the Howard University of the South. It's time for the antiquated, some would even say sexist and old-fashioned structure of all male and all female collegiate learning environments to end. This is not to dismiss the great legacy and work these schools have done, but to honor them by charting a new sustainable course where the legacy of these institutions can thrive.

Take the University System of Georgia’s recent mergers and consolidations, for example. The USG has aggressively moved to consolidate several of its state college and universities of recent years. Over the past six years, the USG has merged or consolidated 20 of their public colleges and universities in an effort to streamline and restructure its system of schools as a cost saving measure.

I like the Atlanta University name better than my own comical name ClarSpelHouse University of Atlanta. 😛

Morehouse College President inauguration

[VIDEO] It's not often that I talk about Morehouse College here on this blog. Bear in mind I created this blog and others in a dorm room (or actually in a computer lab in some instances). This is momentous occasion to see Dr. David A. Thomas officially inaugurated at Morehouse College. The pomp and circumstance of the ceremony to install Dr. Thomas.

An important fact of Dr. Thomas who has been president of Morehouse since just last year, is in fact the first since Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays to have not been a graduate of Morehouse. It would be very interesting what will be an important mark of his tenure.

Just bear in mind that in 2017, Morehouse had faced some major leadership issues that resulted in both the previous president Dr. John Silvanus Wilson and board of trustees chairman Robert Davidson departed from their roles.

I'm sorry to say if you don't like long videos this is about three hours long. If you have time feel free to watch and if you wish fast forward to roughly the 20 min mark to see this ceremony start.

First year student housing issues at CAU

I can relate somewhat with the students of Clark-Atlanta University who are experience some issues with their housing as they began their fall semester:

Clark Atlanta University freshman and sophomores must live on campus to ensure they “receive a strong foundation and create a path of success,” the school’s website says.

But for many students, campus living served as a distracting stressor instead of a stabilizing element on the first day of the fall semester. Sophomore Asma Alamin spent Wednesday morning in Augusta, where she lives, seeking information about temporary housing instead of going to class like she’d planned.

The 23-year-old received an email from CAU in April that included her housing assignment and roommate’s name. When she got to campus on Monday, there was a “huge line” of students waiting for dorm keys.

The students were eventually asked to sign in and wait for a call with more information, Alamin said. The school later told her no dorms were available.

“I feel like Clark needs to be there for their students,” the pre-med student said Wednesday. Alamin said she feels let down, having had higher expectations for the Historically Black College and University (HBCU).

A CAU spokesman said in a statement Monday that students who hadn’t completed the “financial enrollment process are being offered temporary housing.” Alamin said that option wasn’t presented to her.

Alluded to in an article from The Root:

Clark Atlanta’s crisis is indicative of the problems of many small colleges. Institutions that are financially strapped or don’t have large endowments like larger, predominately white institutions that often survive on the revenue from tuition and housing. Because of this, these kinds of issues become prevalent, especially at historically black colleges.

Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy and sociology who researches college housing at Temple University, says colleges force students to live on campus oftentimes because colleges view housing as a money-maker.

Ahhhh housing is a money maker, but then what excuse does CAU have to not having housing available for students? I wanted to say HBCUs should do better, and why because many of their students are coming from backgrounds which enables them to procure student loans and grants. And if CAU is a lot like Morehouse - a private university - going there isn't cheap.

My experience at Morehouse especially during the first decade of the 21st century gave me a lesson about how Morehouse ran their affairs. There were points where I feel as if the prestigious institution could've done some things more efficiently especially registration, housing or financial aid. Perhaps make it more easier for students and their families to understand the process. I often felt Morehouse had nothing on the community college I left behind to go to Atlanta.

Then someone shared this article which shows it's not just HBCUs that have this problem. Evidently this is a problem at UC Berkely, having more students than beds to provide for them - especially if they must stay on campus the first two years of college.

There has to be a solution. Perhaps stop enrolling more students than they can accomodate. Perhaps make some changes to their procedures in situations like this. Perhaps find ways to accomodate the demand and that might mean you'd have to create some housing in the surrounding neighborhoods which during my time at Morehouse didn't exist.

What can we do about it?

Morehouse College President moves into a dormitory!

As an alum of Morehouse College who never had the opportunity to attend New Student Orientation as a transfer student, I would do exactly what President David Thomas is doing. While he is moving into a student dorm, I presume he's also participating in some of the aspects of orientation.

Joining our @Morehouse freshmen in moving into my room in historic Graves Hall to start #MorehouseNSO. First, unpacking my bags before I'm to attend a mandatory resident hall meeting! pic.twitter.com/AN1lQcFal0

— Dr. David A. Thomas (@MorehousePrez) August 7, 2018

Here's an article on this from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Want an example of NSO you should find in your local library a documentary called Morehouse Men. Hopefully you all still have VCRs and hopefully there is actually a DVD copy or perhaps some very ingenious individual has created a digital copy by now! 

Stossel: The College Scam

[VIDEO] Bryan Caplan who is introduced in this recent video from John Stossel as a professor who is the author of The Case Against Education talks about "the college scam". He states something that I have actually stated for years in his words we need to get back where college actually distinguishes you. I would say college shouldn't just be treated as another high school diploma.

He takes it further, and say college shouldn't be so readily accessible. I suppose I have to read his book to see what he means by this. Although I can discuss my experience having gone to Morehouse which had few of the amenities during my time there as seen in many of the colleges listed in the video. For example, Morehouse probably still doesn't have a wall to climb up...

I could say more, however, right now I want you to watch this video...

Tyrone Hankerson speaks

[VIDEO] There were photos of Mr. Hankerson in some exotic locales and showing himself as a fashionable young man going around on social media. I showed you an example of this last week. Then in the last few days he makes his rounds to defend himself and with his lawyer as you see in clip above from CBS News.

He's answering for any potential association he may have to the Howard University financial aid scandal where it was alleged in a now deleted Medium article that he was the recipient of generous financial aid awards. Of course he's going to deny that he got generous financial aid, he denies that he was able to create a generous financial aid package, he also denies that he was fired from his student job in the department, he thus denies that he had any role in financial aid rewards, well yeah I could keep going. Mr. Hankerson has every right to defend himself and clear the air about whatever role he might have had during his time as a student worker with Howard's financial aid officer.

With this said the above video is a little over 6 minutes. Here's another video with journalist Roland Martin which is about 40 minutes. While I may not have time to watch the whole thing, now I wonder what Hankerson and Martin discusses during that time. [VIDEO]

What is going on at Howard?

Wednesday morning I found an article on Medium which has since been removed though cached, which discusses a embezzlement scheme of financial aid money. If I recall correctly Morris Brown College lost its accreditation and sent it's President and director of financial aid into federal court.

Howard University on the other hand is a very important Historically Black College located in the nation's capitol. It has a law school that educated a SCOTUS justice - Thurgood Marshall - and it would be a shame if the school went down the road Morris Brown in Atlanta had in the previous decade. Embezzling financial aid funds student loans, grants and in the case of Morris Brown some students got loans they never requested, because they needed to pay their bills.

Question is why are financial aid officials doing this at Howard?

Howard University fires six employees after investigation into misappropriated funding https://t.co/pVbsKHHDU8

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 28, 2018

A university investigation discovered that for nine years — from 2007 to 2016 — some employees who received tuition benefits to cover the cost of taking classes were also receiving university grants. That double dipping exceeded the actual cost of attendance, signaling that the workers appeared to be embezzling.

The news of misappropriated university funds and the subsequent firings marks the latest blow to Howard’s reputation. The school’s president, Wayne A. I. Frederick, came under fire earlier this month when he criticized a student for her tone when she expressed concern about whether she would get housing. And six women have accused the school — an iconic historically black university — of mishandling sexual assault allegations.

Frederick released a statement Wednesday about the financial aid misdeeds and promised measures had been instituted to prevent a recurrence of the misappropriation.

I was confused by the tuition benefits, but I think what's being stated and further explained in that Medium article is that Howard financial aid employees were receiving tuition benefits for working at the university. Say for example, perhaps they don't have to pay tuition or reduced tuition probably worth some research and that information is easy to find. Yet you might get some type of tuition perk working for the university and yet you get financial aid that could go to students with a need.

Here's the most interesting part that was retweeted by Instapundit:

There are Howard University students living off ramen noodles, but student Tyrone Hankerson was out here vacationing in Brussels, wearing burlap Prada pants and Gucci loafers, and no one suspected a scam? #lol pic.twitter.com/rZY8foVNiP

— Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) March 28, 2018

Evidently this individual noted in that Medium article also works in Howard's financial aid office. Where's Ron Simmons at? [VIDEO]

Then I theorized that this is about the so-called higher education bubble. My idea is a bit convoluted because the bubble just refers to what students are supposed to be getting with a college education as opposed to what they're actually getting. Instead of getting an education that allows college students to truly think independently of the world instead colleges are used to indoctrinate students. And for many years there has been some evidence of this, worse part of this is how many students thinks it's OK to disrupt rallies because they can't stand the political opinions of those who speak on their campus.

On the other hand the financial aspects are part of this. So evidently students who have need may not have their need met because some financial aid office workers learned to game the system. Some deserving student could've gotten some of this money to fund their education, especially someone who is truly dutiful about their studies.

And then on the flip side the undergrad degree I understand doesn't have the value it once did because now going to college is a societal expectation. On top of that what are these students majoring in - for example gender students - and will these majors enable college graduates to get jobs. How does gender studies apply in the business world let's say?

Either way Howard University needs to get their house in order. The one aspect of this story is for the Bisons to get their finances in order so that they don't become another Morris Brown College. The university's law school that helped educate a supreme court justice and a number of Blacks over the years deserves much better than this bad press.

Where is Tim Cunningham? #ATL #Morehouse #Blackandmissing

Cunningham's alma mater (and of course mine) puts out the word about his disappearance. While Morehouse College's ig put this information out on Monday, I've seen this on Facebook at least for about a week.

Here's an article from an Atlanta, Georgia TV station Fox 5:

Timothy Cunningham reported to work on Monday, February 12, but told his supervisors he needed to leave early because he was feeling sick. Loved one said he left his cell phone, his wallet, and his SUV at home. Atlanta Police are holding on to his cell phone as part of their missing person’s investigation.

Loved ones hope someone will recognize Cunningham, perhaps even as a John Doe in a hospital.

"We just hope he will just come home safely. None of this makes sense. He wouldn't just evaporate like this and leave his dog alone and have our mother wondering and worrying like this. He wouldn't," said the missing man's brother.

Anyone with information on Cunningham's whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the Atlanta Police Department at 404-546-4235.

Yeah something odd happened here, though hopefully he's out there safe. Below is what Morehouse College posted to instagram.

Remembering a mudered civil rights pioneer

Alberta Jones

Upon finding out about an article from Very Smart Bros I also found this article from the New York Times which I will share with you today.

A ‘Quest for Justice’ for a Murdered Civil Rights Pioneer, 52 Years Later https://t.co/Kroz4gZwOw

— Levois (@levois) September 22, 2017

I want to say, how very sorry I had been about finally discover this. A young black woman Alberta Jones an attorney was beaten and thrown into the Ohio River and left to drown in August 1965. Why was she murdered? She came back to Louisville, Kentucky to shake things up after graduating from the Howard University Law School. Shaking things up was certainly a dangerous thing to do back then especially in the segregated south.

Alberta Jones is the civil rights pioneer almost no one knows. She was Louisville’s first female black prosecutor and negotiated the first fight contract for Muhammad Ali, her neighbor. She registered thousands of African-American voters in the 1960s and paved the way for a ban on racial discrimination by local theaters and lunch counters.
...
Ms. Jones’s name is absent from the annals of civil rights martyrs of the 1960s, perhaps because there is no clear evidence that her death was racially or politically motivated. Louisville, on the dividing line between North and South, largely avoided the harshest violence of the era, like church bombings and the murder of civil rights workers by white supremacists, and today does not have the immediate resonance of, say, Birmingham, Ala.

Still, the city Ms. Jones returned to in 1959 after graduating from Howard University School of Law was deeply segregated. Blacks could not enter movie theaters or restaurants in the city’s commercial heart, Fourth Street, or try on clothes at department stores.

Ms. Jones helped establish the Independent Voters Association, which registered 6,000 African-Americans. Voting as a bloc, blacks replaced the mayor of Louisville and many of the city’s aldermen in 1961. Two years later these officials outlawed racial discrimination in businesses, the first public accommodation ordinance of its kind in the South.

“We taught the Negros how to use that voting machine,” Ms. Jones told The Courier-Journal in March 1965. It was shortly after she became a city prosecutor, the first woman of any race in that job in Louisville. “When I got back home a lot of people said, ‘You’ve got two strikes against you: You’re a woman and you’re a Negro,’” she told the newspaper. “Yeah, but I’ve still got one strike left, and I’ve seen people get home runs when all they’ve got left is one strike.”

Ms. Jones lived in Louisville’s majority-black West End with her mother and sister, just a couple of blocks from the young Cassius Clay. In 1960, the future Muhammad Ali hired her to represent him when he turned professional. She negotiated a contract with 11 white millionaires, the famous Louisville Sponsoring Group. Protective of her client, she insisted that 15 percent of his winnings be held in trust until he turned 35, with Ms. Jones serving as a co-trustee. Today the contract hangs on the wall of the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.

I sincerely hope that after over 50 years that Ms. Jones will finally get justice for her murder. Unfortunately she gave her life fighting for the civil rights of Blacks in Louisville. And this article illustrates that investigators are continuing to look for her killers. Unfortunately the passage of time has made that very difficult.

On the night Ms. Jones was murdered, Aug. 5, 1965, witnesses saw two black males drag a screaming woman into the back seat of a car like the Ford Fairlane Ms. Jones was driving, according to police records. Her body, with trauma to the head and face, was retrieved from the river near an amusement park in the West End. A large quantity of blood stained the back seat of the Fairlane, discovered nearby, which she had rented while her own car was in the shop.

Ms. [Flora] Shanklin believes that whoever murdered her sister was paid by others. “I don’t know who, but she stepped on some toes,” she said.

There has been some breaks and some connections to this murder. A print was matched to someone who is an elderly man now but was only 17 back then. Regardless hopefully there will be justice for Jones, however, steps are being taken to recognize her contributions:

Next month a Louisville civic group plans to hang a giant banner with Ms. Jones’s portrait on a bank building on Muhammad Ali Boulevard. It will join other portraits downtown honoring prominent people with Louisville roots, including Diane Sawyer and Colonel Harland Sanders of fast-food fame.

Professor Remington hopes the banner will prick someone’s memory — or conscience — about what happened to Ms. Jones 52 years ago. “She spent her whole life fighting for others,” she said. “It’s time somebody started fighting for her.”

I'm a long way from Louisville, Kentucky which is about five hours away from Chicago - yes I know this thanks to the many trip taken on the Greyhound through the city and with layovers. Hopefully someone will fight for her.

As you read this article you noticed she represents the late boxing champion Muhammad Ali right. There was an angle to Ms. Jones' murder involved the Nation of Islam. Ali was at one point associated with them.

Interim president of Morehouse College has died

What an interesting time down there at Morehouse College. Earlier this year there had been a dispute between the college president Silvanus Wilson and college board of trustees Chairman John Davidson. Dispute was so bad both men ultimately resigned shortly before commencement season. I covered as much as I could over at Electric Moleskine especially the development where Samuel Jackson, Spike Lee, and Jeh Johnson - all prominent Morehouse graduates - starting making their own statements hoping to quell the dispute.

As of course Morehouse is undergoing a new Presidential search, their interim President died of an aneuryism today.

Below I share some social media posts which includes official statements from Morehouse College.

We are deeply saddened by the sudden passing of William J. “Bill” Taggart, a beloved colleague, father and friend. For the past two years, Bill devoted himself wholeheartedly to Morehouse College. We are eternally grateful for his loyal support, counsel and the leadership he provided to students, faculty, staff and alumni. Throughout his tenure, Bill had a positive impact on Morehouse College and the greater Atlanta business community. He leaves behind a long legacy of compassion, integrity and devotion. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.

A post shared by Morehouse College (@morehouse1867) on Jun 8, 2017 at 9:03am PDT

WTF???? https://t.co/rukNW0cesa

— Levois (@levois) June 8, 2017

War at Morehouse pt 2

Omar Bustamante/The Root

Morehouse Alumni Samuel L. Jackson - who's latest release is Kong: Skull Island, filmmaker Spike Lee, and former Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson have penned a letter. This letter is certainly critizing the action of the Morehouse College Board of Trustees and the Chairman of the Board. Here's hoping someone is paying attention to this.

.@SpikeLee, @SamuelLJackson, and Jeh Johnson respond to the war at @Morehouse: https://t.co/Ps30PZBrRC pic.twitter.com/VEGmYlzuKr

— The Root (@TheRoot) April 4, 2017

Here's a little background here.

And I missed this, more background.

The "war" at Morehouse?

Graves Hall Morehouse College

I did a quick blurb today at Electric Moleskine blog about the conflict at Morehouse College. There I boiled this situation down to this. However I recommend you read the articles that I have posted there about it.

So let me see packing the board of trustees, keeping student leaders off the college board of trustees, chairman of the board of trustees isn't getting along with the college president, and the board of trustees effectively fired the college president. I wish I knew the nature of this drama.

In that post the article I linked to was from The Root. It's quite a long piece to read to discuss this issue I won't even attempt to except much of it. I do however want to give you a flavor

Over the past few weeks, The Root has spoken with 13 members of Morehouse’s staff, alumni, faculty and students, reviewing several documents—including emails and court documents—accounting for much of the conflict at the institution. What we discovered beneath the polite smiles and aged artifices was an institution teetering on the edge of an outright melee, rife with seething resentment cloaked in academic protocol.

Morehouse College is on the brink of a crisis, and almost no one knows it. Not the students who were so upset with the institution’s hierarchy, they took the college to court; not the faculty members who desperately reached out to The Root because they were so concerned with the situation at the school; not the board of trustees that stiff-armed every other source of input, and not even its president who—after possibly rescuing it from the brink of insolvency—was unceremoniously shown Morehouse’s front door and instructed to not let the doorknob hit him on the way out.

This war has two fronts: On one side, is the faculty of the college. They are the dedicated scholars who understand the day-to-day struggles the school faces. They occupy the offices, hallways, laboratories and classrooms that give Morehouse its stellar reputation.

The only entity more invested in the success of Morehouse is the student body—the soldiers on the ground. No one else spends more time in the hallowed halls of Morehouse; they are the lifeblood of the institution and it is their money that pays the bills. When anyone speaks of the legacy of Morehouse, they are talking about the former and current students. They are Morehouse.

The college is run by a combination of the president of Morehouse and its 40-members-strong board of trustees. (Most college boards average around 11.8 trustees.) The boundaries and responsibilities for each are spelled out in the school’s bylaws. The board appoints the president, who manages the college. At the top of Morehouse’s board of trustees sits its chairman—Robert C. Davidson.

Davidson graduated from Morehouse 50 years ago, but according to interviews, statements and pages of emails and other documents obtained by The Root—he is accused of running the college like a dictator, unwilling to yield or compromise with any outside voices. Faculty, students, a consulting firm, an accreditation committee and an independent analyst have all warned Davidson that the board of trustees’ actions were hurting Morehouse, to no avail.

In response, the board of trustees stacked its roster with cronies, often using undemocratic tactics to silence the faculty, students and even the school’s president. The faculty and students instead, as primary stakeholders in the institution, demanded their voices be heard, but Davidson and the trustees would not budge.

OK that was more than a flavor but enough. On top of that whether or not Dr. Wilson was let go by the college or otherwise he's on his way out of the door. It doesn't matter how it came about.

This article shows that the Chairman of the Morehouse board of trustees doesn't like the President of the College, question is what is the genesis of that conflict. Why is this becoming the big drama when there are other issues at play here? Even though enrollment has been improving and perhaps financially Morehouse is doing better why are we hearing about conflict between board of trustees, president, faculty and students?

Over at E.M. I've posted a number of stories about Morehouse especially since Trump became President. Dr. Wilson was the forefront of disappointment over Trump's plan for America's HBCUs. I even noted Wilson's future departure from Morehouse - fired or at his own free will.

Still what's going on at "Dear old Morehouse"?

So what about the HBCU initiative from White House

Last month President Trump visited with the Presidents of the nations historically Black colleges. And then my alma mater's President made his own statement about this meeting that took place at the White House. It appears the outgoing President of Morehouse College was disappointed in what transpired.

Unfortunately this got lost while the mainstream media and social media went after Trump aide Kellyanne Conway because she chose to sit on an oval office couch with her knees. Even incurred something of a lewd joke by the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus which he was later forced to apologize.

I had first found an official statement by Dr. Wilson and while I shared it at Electric Moleskine it was never read. Now I got a time out to give it a read.

Many had high hopes about this meeting.  There was much advance chatter about it being “historic,” and there were many signals from key Trump administration officials that they would surprise HBCUs with favorable treatment.  Given my experience in the Obama administration, I knew this would require an extraordinary announcement.  Why?  Because I knew that President Obama had invested $3 billion more in HBCUs in his first six years than President Bush invested in his final six years.  Therefore, since President Trump pledged to “do more for HBCUs than any other president has done before,” we could have reasonably expected him to get started by announcing at least an additional $500 million to HBCUs…this year!  And beside the expectation of new funding, there was advance talk of changes like an aspirational goal of 5 to 10 percent for federal agency funding to HBCUs, a special HBCU innovation fund, large boosts in Pell Grant and Title III funding, and extra tax breaks for those in the private sector who contribute to HBCUs.  But, instead of the long-awaited executive order containing or signaling any of those outcomes, the key change is a symbolic shift of the White House HBCU Initiative from the Department of Education to the White House.  It is not possible to measure the impact of this gesture anytime soon, if ever.

Well that paragraph was just to share with you what happened late last month. The chairman of the CBC instead of having to comment on Ms. Conway should've instead had something to say about that executive order. Congressman Richmond himself from Louisiana has a few HBCU's in his state if not his congressional district he should know.

Apparently to politicians and the mainstream media the most important store was not parading around HBCU presidents only to sign an executive order to shift an HBCU initiative from the Department of Education to the White House. This seems to be a waste of their time an effort especially with any apparent build up.

BTW, this may not be a bad thing as the Secretary of Education made this gaffe regarding HBCUs:

 It should also be noted that, in her luncheon speech to HBCU presidents yesterday, Education Secretary DeVos struck a discordant note when she said of HBCUs, “They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education. They saw that the system wasn't working, that there was an absence of opportunity, so they took it upon themselves to provide the solution. HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice.”

 Uhhhhhhhhh, there wasn't much school choice for the newly freed slaves. Many HBCUs were founded in the 19th century, Morehouse College itself was created after the end of the Civil War. School choice hardly, there was little interest by the prevailing society at the time to education Blacks. Although yes many of this nation's HBCUs were founded by whites.

According to Dr. Wilson this is a troubling beginning. If the President hopes to do more than President Obama or President Bush hopefully more is coming from the White House than this executive order.

What is going on at Morehouse?

I'm interrupting the Cubs' pennant winning celebration on this blog for this report from the campus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. There is a plan to raise costs of attendance and mandate that students stay on campus through junior year.

The cost of attending Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College has increased by more than $10,000 a year for some students.

The all-male college is requiring its 2,100 students to live on campus at least three years – not just freshmen, as had been its tradition.

That guarantees Morehouse, which is rebounding from several years of enrollment and cash flow declines, about $13,000 in mandatory room and board fees from each sophomore and junior, over and above tuition and student fees running about $26,700 per year per student.

Cathy Tyler, executive director of strategic communications for Morehouse, says the college gave students a heads-up about the change when they were freshmen and saw no backlash as it was put in place for the Class of 2017.

But the policy is being criticized in an online petition calling for the ouster of Morehouse President John S. Wilson Jr. and his senior leadership team.

The petition, which was launched Oct. 1, says requiring students to live on campus through their junior year is “unethical” and places “the school’s financial burdens on the backs of parents and students.”

This news comes the week of homecoming when many alumni and friends come from all over to engage in many facilities but mainly to show their support. Support not only for the institution but for the football team as there is a game to be played on Saturday.

Question is while it seems this plan has been in the works, how likely it is that those anonymous petition signers will get most of what they ask for?