Southern University Marching Band - Michael Jackson Tribute

On Saturday, September 5, 2009, Southern University played Louisiana-Lafayette in football. They were blown out by a score of 42-19. But the Human Jukebox, also known as the Southern University Marching Band wowed the crowed with a thrilling Michael Jackson tribute:

plez sez: that was a nice show, but why didn't they show the score (a Human Jukebox tradition)?!?

Building at Morris Brown College Auctioned Off

Morris Brown College is in downtown Atlanta. This once proud historically black college (HBCU) was founded in 1881 - one of only handful of HBCU's to have been founded by former slaves.

The luster of this small college has continued to be diminished over the years after it lost its accreditation by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) for shoddy bookkeeping and a shortage of professors with advanced degrees in December 2002. With the loss of accreditation, the students of the school lost the opportunity to receive any federal or state financial aid.

For the past six and a half years, Morris Brown has been scraping and scratching for survival with few students, a handful of dedicated faculty, and a big lack of money to sustain itself and its most basic needs (the water to the campus was shut off by the city of Atlanta for a bill that exceeded $350,000).

On Tuesday afternoon, what is undoubtedly the final salvo of Morris Brown College was hurled over the bow into the trash heap of history with the auction of one of its classroom buildings on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse steps for $900,000.

What follows are excerpts from the AJC.com about the sale of Jordan Hall:

Financially embattled Morris Brown College lost a classroom building, Frederick D. Jordan Hall, to foreclosure on Tuesday.

Investors, who financed a $13.1 million construction loan for the building in 1996, bought Jordan Hall for a fraction of that sum Tuesday at a foreclosure sale on the steps of the Fulton County Courthouse. The building sold for $900,000.

What will happen to the property is unclear. Lawyers present at the foreclosure sale refused to comment. Repeated telephone calls to attorneys for the U.S. Bank Association, which represents the investors, were not returned.

“This is certainly not a great day for the Morris Brown family and the Atlanta community,” college board of trustees vice chairman Sonny Walker said Tuesday in a prepared statement. “However, the glass is not empty.”

Walker and other Morris Brown boosters spent Monday scrambling to delay the forced sale of the building one more time. Jordan Hall originally was scheduled to be auctioned on Jan. 6, but administration officials and Morris Brown boosters persuaded investors to delay that sale. They won a second reprieve in February.

The loss of Jordan Hall is likely to have little, if any, impact on day-to-day campus life, administration officials said. The college now has about 200 students enrolled, college officials said Tuesday.

“The students are in class and Morris Brown College is open for business,” Stanley Pritchett, acting president of the college, said in a prepared statement. “We are making strides toward securing interim funding which will enable us to relieve the strain of weekly financial crises … but the need for large donations is critical – especially from the Atlanta community.”

Jordan Hall, once home to the school’s Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Administration program, is locked. Furniture and equipment is stacked inside several entrances to the building. The Ruth Hall Hodges Art Gallery, which had space in Jordan Hall, is padlocked.

Despite the sale, Morris Brown continues to owe $12.2 million for the defaulted construction loan.

Morris Brown’s financial problems go beyond that debt. The college recently averted closing its doors when Atlanta extended a Feb. 17 deadline for Morris Brown to pay $214,000 in overdue water bills.

As of last week, according to a news release, supporters of Morris Brown had raised $150,000 to pay the water bills, now due March 19.

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plez sez: i can't hold my tongue any longer... morris brown college will never return as an HBCU! it is a relic, a dusty skeleton of a dinosaur looking back at days when it had meat on its bones. morris brown college [sic] is an institution that outlived its usefulness and relevance.

when the SACS revoked morris brown's accreditation in 2002, that was the last gasp of a sick college on life support. its reputation long since in tatters, the pride of a once proud HBCU couldn't muster the energy of one last lap around the atlanta university center... its brothers and sisters at morehouse, spelman, and clark atlanta university drove past the wreck that was morris brown college as if its demise was preordained.

plezWorld knows a number of graduates of the "other" schools in the AUC; they play lip service and sob crocodile tears over the demise of morris brown college, yet still snicker among themselves that they knew this day would come, and welcome the removal of the faded purple banners and its subpar students. over the years, i've heard the derisive statements about the caliber of students who attended "mo' brown high school"!

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before turning your nose up at morris brown, the rest of the auc is also in a bit of pinch. just a few weeks ago, clark atlanta cut 70 full-time faculty and 30 full-time staffers. it combined some courses and cancelled all pe classes for the remainder of the semester. the cost to attend clark atlanta, including food, housing and tuition, is about $25,000. about 90 percent of its students receive financial aid.

and morehouse laid off about one-third of its part-time instructors... tough times can be found all over the auc. not quite as bad as over at mo' brown, but tough never-the-less.

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morris brown college was the first HBCU founded by black people... it got a noble start in 1881. at one time, this proud school stood shoulder to shoulder with the member schools in the AUC. time, decay, neglect, and misappropriation of federal funds slowly sucked the life from the school. plezWorld arrived in the ATL in the early '80's to attend georgia tech; morris brown was already on the decline. it was the joke of the auc when i showed up in atlanta.

enrollment in 2008 is struggling to stay above three digits - i sat in undergraduate classes with more students than the entire enrollment of morris brown. i don't know anyone with a college age student who would send their child there. the water to the campus was temporarily shut off in december 2008 (the school is still over $200,000 in arrears on its water bill). a handful of supporters have taken to collecting money from motorists who pass the campus in a vain attempt to save the school. every month or so, i get an e-mail message with an appeal to contribute money to the lost cause that is mo' brown. there are less than 10 faculty at the school. a degree from the school isn't worth much more than the paper it's written on. i'm afraid that the auctioning off of jordan hall was merely a public acknowledgement that old mo' brown has finally hit rock bottom.

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i propose a re-purposing of the school. for the past 20 years, it has been an unmitigated failure as an institution of higher learning, maybe it would fare better as a prep school or a boarding school for at-risk youth? make it an attractive alternative school that prepares young black boys to attend college. it has been little more than a glorified high school of late, it may as well seal the deal and make it official.

there are billions of dollars in the Obama Stimulus Package for education. maybe morris brown could re-purpose itself to be a trade school for those who want to become certified for work in the new green economy? the school has classrooms, dormitories, and a cafeteria... the only thing it's missing are new students. this is a new day and morris brown needs to move away from the faded 19th century HBCU model to a purpose that is more relevant to the 21st century.

plezWorld welcomes your thoughts and opinions...

~ ~ Citations ~ ~

Read the AJC.com article about Jordan Hall being auctioned off.

Read the AJC.com article about Morris Brown's BIG A$$ water bill.

Read the AJC.com article about Clark Atlanta's woes.

Read the AJC.com article about cuts at Morehouse.

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2008 Atlanta Classic - FAMU vs. TSU

BLOG UPDATE: 09/27/2008 11:44 PM - The FAMU Rattlers have won their seventh straight Atlanta Classic, by defeating the TSU Tigers by a score of 28-21... and the afterparty was OFF DA CHAIN! Read the live blog of the game here.

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The 2008 installment of the Atlanta Classic will feature the bands and football teams and alumni of Florida A&M University against Tennessee State University on Saturday, September 27 at the Georgia Dome in downtown Atlanta.

A couple of my frat brothers (alums of FAMU and TSU) will be hosting a big after party the night of the game at the Georgia Freight Depot ... check out the video with the party's plug (purchase tickets here). ENJOY!

"We Run the Classic" by Kountin' Fast Cash

Morehouse College's First White Valedictorian

Morehouse College is a Historically Black College (HBCU) in Atlanta, Georgia. It was founded in 1867, just a few years after the end of the Civil War to educate the recently freed Black men in the South. Morehouse has the distinction of not only being an exceptional institution of higher education (with notable alumni like Martin Luther King, Jr and Spike Lee), but it is also the only all-male HBCU. Well, Morehouse can now add its first white valedictorian to the list of notable facts.

Joshua Packwood is graduating from Morehouse with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in economics. He is a Rhodes Scholar and has already landed a plum job with Goldman Sachs in New York City. Joshua is a native of Kansas City, MO and was highly recruited out of high school. He picked Morehouse because of its reputation as one of the top HBCUs in the United States. He will be the first white valedictorian in the school's 141-year history.

Read the AJC article about Joshua Packwood here.


plez sez: several of my good friends and fraternity brothers (my fraternity's oldest chapter (pi) in the deep south is located at morehouse) are graduates of morehouse college. if i would have gone to an hbcu out of high school, morehouse would have been at the top of the list. at times, i regret that i didn't get to enjoy the "black experience" at a school such as morehouse.

i have written a few posts about the state of education in the black community and have touched on my thoughts about hbcus in general. save a precious few (morehouse, spelman, hampton, howard, etc.), a good number have outlived their usefulness as institutions of higher learning for an exclusive Black population. last year there was a report about problems at clark atlanta university: read my response here (...and i admit that all of their professors are not overpaid!).

a shining example of what is right can be found on the campus of morehouse college... and this year's valedictorian is just that! by diversifying their enrollment and actively pursuing non-Black students to their campuses, the hbcu can find relevance and renewed prowess in the pantheon of all colleges and universities. joshua's presence can only help raise the awareness of what a top notch school morehouse has become, his presence may not have the same effect at a school that struggles to matriculate quality students. i have no worry that even with more non-Black students, morehouse will continue it rich tradition of being a flagship hbcu.

kudos to morehouse colllege and to joshua packwood.

Another HBCU on the Brink?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Clark Atlanta University in the Atlanta University Center (the largest African-American consortium of higher education in the United States), also known as the AUC has implemented a hiring freeze and cut back on raises to save money after about 240 fewer students than expected enrolled during the school's chaotic fall registration, school officials said this week. There are reports that there has been a 5 percent drop-off in undergraduate enrollment and an 11 percent dip in graduate student enrollment, to 4,271 total students.

With tuition and associated costs at over $30,000 per year, about half of the students who did not enroll cited issues with financial aid or housing.

Read the entire AJC article here.

Another Atlanta University Center school - Morris Brown College - was mired in a financial aid scandal which caused the school to lose its accreditation in 2002 (meaning students cannot receive federal or state financial aid for their school expenses). As of the Fall 2007 semester, Morris Brown College is scratching for survival with fewer than 100 students and a handful of faculty members. It appears that the only two viable colleges left in the AUC are all-male Morehouse College and all-female Spelman College.

All of the member schools in the Atlanta University Center are Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Most of the schools began as small glorified training schools to educate freedman after the Civil War and have a rich, long-standing place in the annals of African-American history. Prior to the 21st century, most African-American students who went to college were educated at an HBCU.


plez sez: everything has a time and a place. our oldest HBCU's served the Black community and America at a time when this country didn't know what to do with its newly freed chattel. when southern colleges and universities would not open their doors to Black Americans for close to a century after the end of slavery, these HBCU's were there to educate, motivate, and uplift the race.

i'm afraid that in the 21st century, the time for many (if not most) of the HBCU's has passed. the top students that once had limited opportunities to attend college now have a vast array of choices, most state universities have better/newer facilities, better trained faculty, more financial resources, lower tuition costs, better networking opportunities, and a global student population that cannot be found on a majority of the HBCU's. the issue of strained budgets, higher percentage of students needing financial aid, over-inflated faculty salaries, and dwindling student population is not confined to Clark Atlanta University. these same financial woes drove the administration of Morris Brown College to embezzle federal funds to keep that school afloat for as long as it did, and now it sits barely functional as an institution of higher learning and more a shell of its former tenuous existence.

look at a list of top colleges and universities in the United States and you'll wonder if these 114 historically black colleges even exist. save a handful of these schools (ex. Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, Hampton, Fisk, and Tuskegee), most HBCU's are irrelevant when speaking about HBCU's! in a country where Black people are no longer the largest minority, segregating our students in an educational ghetto is not uplifting the race. my two oldest brothers attended HBCU's, the quality of their education was vastly inferior to the education that the rest of my siblings and plezWorld received at mainstream universities. most of these schools are small (less than 10,000 students), private (with costs over $30,000 per year), old (most are over 100 years old), and financially strapped (with low alumni support).

read the HBCU Ranking in the US News & World Report.

i am thisshort of proposing the dismantling of the current HBCU "system," but i would entertain the contraction of the system. combine schools, such as those in the AUC into a larger more viable university. instead of having 4 small colleges, why not create one much larger university that reduces redundant function, cuts out the waste, and enhances the college experience. instead of Morehouse, Spelman, Clark, and Morris Brown as separate schools, create the Atlanta University. for those traditionalists, each campus could maintain a portion of their traditional identity (similar to what is done at Rutgers University in New Jersey), while having a student population that can support a true educational institution of higher learning.

similarly, this model can be extended around the country where traditional HBCU's can be absorbed or contracted into larger more viable HBCU's or mainstream state universities (for example, combine Florida A&M University with Florida State University, and combine South Carolina State University with University of South Carolina).

if you are a graduate of a HBCU, you will probably think what i wrote is heresy, but change is constant and inevitable. when one looks at the current state of HBCU's in the United States, to my way of thinking, it would be wise to be the cause of change rather than letting the change happen to you! the issues at Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown College are not unique within the HBCU community, and it is only a matter of time before more and more of these historical educational monuments begin to disappear into the dust from which they arose.


plezWorld family education. My two oldest brothers graduated from HBCU's: Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and Virginia State College (now Virginia State University). My third brother and sister graduated from University of Pennsylvania (Penn undergrad and medical school) and Rutgers University (The State University of New Jersey), respectively. My niece graduated from Old Dominion University (ODU). My mother-in-law and father-in-law graduated from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University). My wife's brother graduated from Kansas State University. My wife graduated from University of Georgia (UGA). I graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) which is just a few miles from the AUC.

Neither of my parents attended a four-year college or university, but as you can see, they were fanatics about ensuring that all of their children were college graduates.

March Madness: HBCUs and NCAA

Two separate news stories touch on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and the "stigma" attached with being relegated to the play-in games associated with the NCAA Basketball Championship (March Madness).

The following is the March 11th Washington Post article titled "Battling Against 'Stigma' of Play-In":

Hampton made two NCAA tournament appearances during Jeff Granger's college basketball career, both losses, but the experiences were very different.

The first was in 2002, when, as a redshirt, Granger watched the No. 15 seed Pirates lose to No. 2 seed Connecticut in the first round at a sold-out Verizon Center. The other was last year, before fewer than 8,000 fans in Dayton, when Hampton was assigned to play Monmouth in the "opening round" for the right to get into the bracket of 64.

"I know what being in the tournament is," Granger said. The opening-round game "was kind of, sort of, that experience. But it wasn't."

The NCAA tournament's opening-round game, which was added in 2001 and is commonly known as the play-in game, still faces the perception that it is not truly a part of the tournament. It is an issue of particular interest for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), whose teams have been relegated to the Tuesday night game most often. If the NCAA selection committee keeps with its current pattern when the field of 65 is announced today, it would mark the sixth straight season that the champion of the Southwest Athletic Conference or the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, the two leagues that comprise Division I's historically black colleges, will be sent to the play-in game.

"[It's] a backdoor way into the tournament," Hampton President William R. Harvey said.

The play-in game was created as a compromise to preserve the number of at-large bids in the NCAA tournament after the creation of the Mountain West Conference increased the number of automatic bids from 33 to 34. Held in Dayton, Ohio, it pits two of the least competitive teams in the field for the right to be a No. 16 seed and face a No. 1 seed in the traditional field of 64. It is the only game in the tournament that is not a part of the television deal between CBS and the NCAA.

"Dayton has hosted that game in fine fashion and the NCAA has done everything possible to treat the game as a tournament game," said Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson, a former member of the NCAA selection committee. "But there is a stigma attached to the two conferences that are playing in that game."

Since its creation, three representatives from the SWAC and two from the MEAC have been sent to the game. The Big South, with two appearances, is the only other league in the country that has sent a team more than once.

The trend is alarming to some affiliated with the two conferences, especially coaches such as Florida A&M's Mike Gillespie, who said that the majority of their teams face unique challenges that make it difficult to compare their competitive résumés to those of other schools.

"I feel the MEAC is every bit as good as the Southland, the Northeast," said Gillespie, who led Florida A&M to the tournament in 2004. "Our top five teams are every bit as good. Why do we have to be singled out each and every year?"

First-year Hampton coach Kevin Nickelberry called the opening round a "pseudo conference tournament game," one that a conference champion shouldn't have to play.

"I dare anybody to say that the experience of a kid in a HBCU is any less important than anybody else's," Nickelberry said. "They got up at 5 o'clock in the morning, they lifted weights, they did everything else that they do at Auburn, Maryland and Ohio State. Their experience is being compromised, and you're basically saying it doesn't matter."

The situation also creates a quandary for members of the NCAA tournament selection committee, which five years ago created a subcommittee asked specifically to handle seeding for the tournament's bottom rung in hopes of combating what Benson called the "stereotyping" of seeds.

But since the game has been created, the SWAC and MEAC have ranked at or near the bottom of the country in the Ratings Percentage Index formula, one of the tools used by the committee to slot teams. The conferences also have had some strange postseason luck. Last season's MEAC tournament provides the perfect example: Delaware State won the regular season title but Hampton earned the NCAA berth through winning the conference tournament.

"When it's like that, what are you going to do?" said Jack Kvancz, George Washington's athletic director, who is a former member of the selection committee.

Jerry Palm, a national expert on the RPI formula used by the committee, said the simplest way to avoid the play-in game is to earn a higher rating by winning more games. "Those teams are down there [in rankings] because they can't beat anybody," said Palm, who operates the Web site http://www.collegerpi.com. "I think that those teams are genuinely not-so-good."

But Gillespie and Nickelberry said the problem is much more complex.

HBCUs typically schedule what are known as "guaranteed money" games against elite programs, which are capable of delivering the largest payouts. At Florida A&M, Gillespie said, a typical slate of between seven or nine guaranteed money games generates nearly $275,000 annually, money the school's athletic program depends on for survival. For smaller schools, these games are played on the road and are often guaranteed losses, which have devastating effects on a team's RPI.

"To get beat by 30 points doesn't create confidence for a team and doesn't raise your RPI," said Nickelberry, whose Pirates are one of the few black college teams that don't have to play money games.

While accepting money for a mismatch deal is common among the nation's smaller conferences, HBCUs play the most -- which Gillespie said distorts team records. This season, the MEAC's 11 teams averaged four games against schools from the six major conferences this season, the most in the country, and went 0-45 in those games. The SWAC averaged just over three games against the majors, finishing 1-33.

Palm said some smaller schools and conferences that have managed to increase their RPIs have done so by playing lower ranked mid-majors that are more likely to enter home-and-home scheduling agreements. Though the payouts aren't as large, the competition gap isn't as large. But, Nickelberry said, most schools in the historically black conferences can't afford to do away with money games.

"If you play that many guaranteed games, it's not possible, based on the equation, to copy what other people have done," Nickelberry said. "You can't do it."

While MEAC Commissioner Dennis Thomas maintains the play-in game will remain part of the tournament, he knows first-hand what a better seed can mean for a program. He was the athletic director at Hampton when the 15th-seeded Pirates beat No. 2 seed Iowa State, 58-57, in 2001 in one of one of the greatest upsets in the history of the NCAA tournament. Another MEAC school was behind another stunning upset in 1997, when No. 15 seeded Coppin State beat No. 2 South Carolina, 78-65.

"It's kind of ironic when two upsets in recent years have been from the HBCUs," Nickelberry said.

The thought of joining those ranks is one of the reasons that Nickelberry said he left his spot as an assistant on Oliver Purnell's staff at Clemson to take the job at Hampton, which with an endowment of more than $220 million can avoid the pitfalls of other HBCUs.

"But what about the teams that can't do it?" Nickelberry said.

The following is an excerpt from today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution article titled 'Selection boss deflects slap at play-in game':

Niagara, which won Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Tournament, said it felt "disrespected" because it was put into the first-round game with Florida A&M (an HBCU which won the MEAC Conference Championship) Tuesday night in Dayton, Ohio.

Niagara (22-11), which started the season 1-6 because it had suspended several players, felt it should not be in the Tuesday night game because there were other teams in the tournament with lower rankings than its 134 in the RPI.

"I think it was shocking," coach Joe Mihalich told the Associated Press. "I think everybody was shocked and maybe some people were insulted by it. But that's good. That's fine with us."

Walters dismissed the suggestion that asking teams to play in Tuesday's game cheapens their NCAA experience.

"There are 260 teams that would love to be playing in the opening round game tomorrow night," Walters said in a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon.

The tournament field expanded from 64 to 65 teams in 2001 because the number of conferences that received automatic bids grew to 31. The larger conferences wanted maintain the 34 at-large bids that had previously existed so the play-in, or opening round, game between two of the lower seeds was created. It is not always reserved for the two lowest seeds in the tournament.

Walters conceded that there has been sensitivity not to put two representatives of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (MEAC, SWAC) into the opening round game. With Florida A&M, in Tuesday's game this marks the sixth straight season that a team from one of those two conferences has been in the Tuesday game.

"There were about 40 teams with 20 wins that didn't even get in the tournament," Walters said. "Nobody was out to punish anybody. I don't understand why there is concern about Niagara playing in the opening round game. It's an honor to play."

plez sez: I have a strong bias about this issue because my alma mater is a member of the ACC (GO JACKETS!) which has 6 teams in the NCAA Championship Tournament.

I am glad that the field of teams was expanded to accommodate more conference champions, because without it, probably only one HBCU would have the opportunity to participate, instead of the two that we have now (Florida A&M and Jackson State). Admittedly, these schools are much smaller than most Division I schools, have much smaller athletic budgets, and attract basketball players who by-and-large are not recruited to the much larger programs.

Over the past week, I took the opportunity to watch some of the games in the MEAC and SWAC Tournaments. The level of competition was several rungs below that of a mid-major; I saw very few starters who could even walk-on at an ACC, SEC, or Big 12 university. To be honest, it is refreshing to read that the selection committee is sensitive to limiting the play-in game to only one HCBU, because in reality, both of them should probably be playing tonight!

I am going to keep it real, though, I'll be rooting for Florida A&M tonight (GO RATTLERS!), if I can find the game on TV!