No Closure, No Merger, but Adequate Fundimg

The proposal to merger Mississippi’s three historically black universities has been getting a lot of press these days. A lot of negative feeds and confused students, faculty, staff and alums of the three universities. Governor Barbour has stood by his plan to merge the three HBCUs since day one of announcing the proposed plan. However many people have strongly disagreed with him and his brilliant way of getting a plan in the works in order to save money, due to the financial burden and responsibility that lie ahead for the next couple of years that he has to make tough decisions on. The Clarion Ledger has been reporting of the merge since the beginning, trying to feed into any negative aspects of the merge, while stating the facts and introducing the media to what is happening each and every day of the merge. Surprisingly the Mississippi Link covered the story in much more detail and got responses from a variety of sources, whom in which the merge would affect and from professionals and experts on HBCUs. Marybeth Gasman, an associate professor in the graduate school of education at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on HBCUs, stated that Barbour’s plan “is not in the best interest of the African-American students in the state.”
It is simply silly to merge three institutions just because they are historically black in nature. This assumes that they are all the same and that there is no diversity within the black college context. JSU is an urban institution, and Alcorn and Mississippi Valley are rural in nature; a merger would bring together institutions with very different student bodies and missions. And I believe this is what most media coverage tried to convey and express to the mass audience. How this merger would affect the students most importantly.
U.S. News and World Report have reported that the governor’s recommendation does not honor the spirit of the Fordice settlement, which aimed to bolster HBCUs, not destroy them. Given the history of Mississippi and its extreme forms of racism and segregation, more--not less--should be done for the HBCUs in the state.
NO MERGER, NO CLOSURE, but ADEQUATE FUNDING