Photo: Ayesha N. Johnson/Trilogy
Surveying the faces of students walking the halls, I often find myself innocently conjecturing to myself about personality type, preferences, and the like. I find myself wondering about their destinations, actual and self-perceived. You can learn a lot watching people in transit. As students move about the campus, they’re driven by the singular broad goal of earning a degree from an institution of higher learning. It’s this shared goal that’s the common denominator in their formula for a successful future, and often what brings them to an HBCU, right? This is certainly true, on the surface level, but beneath the surface lies the disquieting air of the real reason some of these students attend: they’re fans of these schools because they hear they’re a breeze…as in easy to graduate.
I seldom consider statistics as the sole basis for forming an opinion, because it’s easy to overlook the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of who’s surveying. One example of this can be found in the controversial book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, in which politically correct, soft core bigots Charles Murray and Richard J. Hernstein venture the claim that that African Americans are culturally and physiologically wired to under-achieve, a consequence of lower than average IQs. Though the highly refuted claim was shredded by analysts of all kinds for its lack of unbiased data, if I played the devil’s advocate—even for a moment—I’d have to consider that it wouldn’t qualify other racial groups as more intelligent, but rather, better equipped.
In a competitive climate, one can compare achieving academic goals to a race to the finish line, with the quality of education being the vehicle. Considering this analogy, which one of these students would arrive at their destination first? The one whose parents just dropped 70 grand on a fast sports car as a birthday gift, or the one who has to catch two trains and a bus? The kid on the bus can get there; he can even get there first, but he has to wake up a lot earlier. Barring a full scholarship, students from low income families have to work harder to open themselves up to the same opportunities.
So what’s the component that makes some push harder against the odds than others? For black, first generation college students, the odds stacked against them are nothing new. In fact, I look at them as almost ancient. The difference is, now those odds don’t seem to push black youth the way they once did. Now, there’s a different kind of dialogue taking place in the hallways. Low expectations hang thick in the air at HBCUs, threatening to infect its students like an airborne virus. The latest trend that has already begun to diminish the prestige and standard of education at these institutions isn’t coming from an ominous force outside the school walls; it’s coming from the psyche of the students themselves.
The Emile Durkheim Theory of alienation thrives in conditions such as these: students have finally internalized the negative projections they’ve been bombarded with about their own success, or lack thereof, and it has become insular. Students no longer elect to challenge themselves while attending the same institutions that produced civil rights leaders, Nobel Peace prize winners, and some of the greatest scholars this country—and modern history—had ever seen. Rather, there are striving to bulletproof it, and enable them to coast by. They are hurling themselves toward mediocrity and enjoying the descent. There’s no contesting that students will push to preserve the laidback atmosphere and social scene of the universities they attend. Homecoming committees will never be short-handed, and parties will never go unplanned, but it’s a bitter-sweet consolation when attendance rates are low, schools are threatened with loss of accreditation, and the sentiment behind HBCUs becomes one that denotes a lax atmosphere that no longer produces graduates that will be able to compete on a global, or even domestic level. As the social aspects of attending an HBCU continue beckon to black youth, terms like ‘party school’ and ‘easy instructors’ ricochet off the classroom walls, and in a short while, everyone who attends will be affected by the decline.
There are rays of light piercing these dark clouds, though. There are students who genuinely believe in the tradition of success that was synonymous with the HBCU. I watch their faces as they traverse the campus. They are those who march to the tune of restoration, altering the stale ambience in the classrooms. Watching their faces, I make my assessment: there’s always a turnaround that starts with a gleam in eyes of students like these. Right now, as they read this, there are brows that furrow as a sign of their determination to challenge preconceived notions about what an HBCU can do for them, and their future. They bear the task of shattering the glass ceiling – these chosen few – and this article hasn’t negatively redefined them, clipped their wings, or curbed their enthusiasm in the least. Instead, it has probably caused them to redirect themselves to superior achievement – exactly as it was intended to do.
