Signatures Promise Graduation
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To push themselves and each other to obtain a diploma, about 300 students have gripped markers and signed an MSU student group’s banner intended to increase graduation rates among black students.
Janeen Anderson, president of Black Student Alliance, was the first to sign the 3-by-5 foot banner.
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“The banner will affect the number of black students who graduate because by signing in permanent ink, they are promising themselves they will own up to their responsibility to graduate.”
Anderson created the banner after the issue of increasing retention rates among the black community was brought up at a town hall meeting organized by the group in November.
The national black student college graduation rate was 43 percent in 2007, according to The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
About 6.2 percent of bachelor’s degrees earned at MSU went to black students during the 2006-07 school year, according to statistics provided by the Office of Planning and Budgets.
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[Christina Lowe, an advertising sophomore] said the dropout rate of black students could be because people allow these statistics to influence their goal to graduate.
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Group members said a disparity in the gender of graduating black students is another issue to consider. Of the 379 black students who graduated during the 2006-07 school year, 62 percent were women.
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(Posted on April 9, 2008)
Comments
Yeah…because permanant marker and non-binding contracts will change the nature of beast.I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their fellow students told them that because they wrote their names they were no longer black enough.
Posted by NorthAmericanWhiteMan at 6:08 PM on April 9
I`m working on a street crime banner as we speak…
Posted by Tim Mc Hugh at 6:08 PM on April 9
Blacks drop out because they are discouraged by their high dropout rate.
“Janeen Anderson, president of black student alliance, was the first to sign the 3-by-5 foot banner.”
I wonder if the white dropout rate could be reduced if whites didnt have the stigma of not being allowed to form the “White Student Aliance” hanging over their heads? Perhaps some diversity training for people of color so they could become more in tune with the needs and sensitivities of white students is in order. That and some long term counseling for the slighted white students just might reduce the white dropout rate.
Posted by Mike Harrigan at 6:23 PM on April 9
This sounds like the sort of educational kiddie games they tried to teach me in my credential program, to be used in elementary schools. Signing this childish banner is evidence of unfitness to enter college, even as a Black Studies major. Can you imagine chemistry majors doing such a thing?
Posted by Schoolteacher at 6:58 PM on April 9
The only way they’ll make to graduation is if standards are lowered to accomodate their sub-par performances and intellect. The reason why they drop out is because they were never qualified to enter the university in the first place.
They’re admitted due to affirmative action, then once they’re in a real academic environment, they cannot handle the workload or course information. Despite affirmative action tutoring programs, they still can’t handle the academics and drop out. That’s the bottom line.
George Manuelian
San Jose, CA
Posted by George Manuelian at 8:58 PM on April 9
It’s a fact that the most intelligent Blacks are the ones who have White ancestry mixed in. They are the ones who are the activists, they’re the ones who make the most complaints about Whites. They’re the ones who feel the most hurt even when there is no hurt.
This is our own genes coming to haunt us. This is referred to as ‘genetic theft’. Whites having children with Blacks (usually white girls or women) The resulting children consider themselves Black but have the increased intelligence and better looks of Whites and then claim these gifts for their own race. The quintessential current example is Barack Obama.
Posted by Awakened at 11:15 PM on April 9
So that is the secret! Have them sign a banner! Why didn’t we think of this before? Maybe racism blinded us.In my day, you just sat down in the classroom, cracked open a book and went to work-quietly.
Posted by flyingtiger at 1:01 AM on April 10
What most students on college campuses don’t realize is how their civil rights (i.e. their right to equal protection) are violated EVERY semester. It’s no secret to the many professors and deans that there is a clear double standard in GRADING for black students; particularly in Arts & Sciences.
This ‘lower standard’ in grading occurs in classes where grades are based on more subjective criteria such as: essays, term papers, or short answer questions. Naturally, the grades and standards in classes like chemistry, physics, and calculus are much harder ‘fix’.
After a dose of reality their first semester of school, most blacks will end up tracking into ‘soft’ majors like Black Studies, Education (of all things) or ‘dumbed-down’ versions of Sociology. These majors will not get them into med school, but are just fine for the government ‘gravy train’.
Every ‘Dean of Undergraduate Studies’ on every campus KNOWS this, and spends countless hours trying to ‘work with the professor’ to ‘get these students through’. They also spend countless hours on the phone with irate black parents, church members, legislators….yes even legislators, trying to explain what the school is doing to ‘nurture’ the little darlings.
THIS IS A NATIONAL CIVL RIGHTS SCANDAL.
Posted by Pasha at 4:01 AM on April 10
Since we’re talking about blacks and colleges:
News from a recent AMREN article.
The black man who sexually assaulted and then murdered a white female Eastern Michigan University college student ended up with a hung jury at his first trial because a black woman didn’t want “another black man going to prison”. He was just found guilty at his second trial.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080408/METRO/804080399/-1/ARCHIVE
It took the new jury at the new trial just 5 hours to reach the verdict. The killer’s family plans to appeal.
Posted by Proactive at 9:49 AM on April 10
When I was in college, I witnessed the same incident every semester regarding black students.
On the first day of class, blacks would attend to get the syllabus. If attendance wasn’t taken or wasn’t required, you wouldn’t see them until the syllabus noted a test or a project was due.
On the last day of class, the black students would stay behind and wait in line to talk to the teacher and give them a song and dance routine about why they didn’t attend class, why they missed a test or a project, and argue why it was critical for their financial aid or standing to ‘pass’ this class.
It was predictable as night and day and I used to stay to the end just to watch the show.
This, among other reason, is why I have no sympathy reading any story about black academic failure or underachievement.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 10:19 AM on April 10
In the ObamAmerica of the future a Constitutional Amendment will make simple objective fact against the law. Facts are racist and oppressive and must never be uttered without penalty of law.
Posted by at 2:16 PM on April 10
Here I always thought high school students who dropped out did so because they thought schoolwork was harder than a lifetime of the sort of menial jobs they’d have to look foreward to if they didn’t graduate.
Even for someone who obviously isn’t college-track material, vocational-technical training is usually FREE for high school students, while community colleges charge tuition for adults who want to learn the same skills. Auto repair, welding, carpentry, building maintenance are all jobs one can make a living at, and which can’t easily be moved offshore.
What sort of numbskulls are the parents of the dropouts? The very simple approach would be for parents to tell a would-be dropout, “OK, you can drop out, but if you do, you may not stay in our home.”
Dropout kids clearly are just not thinking ahead, and their parents are not making appropriate leverage out of their authority. Signing a banner isn’t going to change this.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 5:19 PM on April 10
I use to teach at a local community college, I remember that the black students had all the right “attitude”…the first day.
They were gung ho when the first assignment was handed out.Lots of loud talking, posturing with studious looks etc.
Then…as the due date on the papers came closer and closer
the facade began to crumble. Unable to do the assignment, unable to even identify what questions they needed to ask so the could understand the material they sat there..soon the excuses began, sickness, family problems, room mate problems etc etc. The last weeks of the semester I would get a call from the school counselors asking if I could “do something” about
Tyrone, or Lakeesha…some special assignment so they could pass the class. I said..sure…just finish the first assigment
handed out 12 weeks ago..thats all..just one completed paper.
And that was the last I ever saw of them.
Posted by at 6:59 PM on April 10
I posted the following on the original article:
“You have to embrace your own self-drive and graduate because it’s important to you…I signed it as a written proposal to myself…The banner sets a standard within the black community.”
Verbal swagger signifying nothing. “You have to embrace your own self-drive”—this tiny blizzard of words is English? How about, “You have to work hard.”
“a ‘proposal’ to myself”? Did the speaker mean, “a promise to myself”? Words have meaning, not just sound. Possibly this is no longer taught, and students can’t be blamed for not knowing it.
“The banner sets a standard”—I love that one. A vacuous phrase from TV commercials. “Toyota (or whatever) ‘sets the standard.’”
Probably two things are missing at this school: teachers who understand what is clear thought and clear expression, and students who are willing to do the HARD WORK required to learn from such teachers.
Blacks whose desire to learn is deeper than a momentary flutter of excitement might find some help in John McWhorter’s book, “Losing the Race.” He’s a black professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley who has put into his book his observations from many years of teaching black students.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 6:59 PM on April 10
I wish some of the excellent posts above would also be posted at the end of the original article, which so far has NO comments except my own. It only takes a moment to cut and paste, and help a few white students open their eyes to what is in front of their faces.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 3:45 AM on April 11
“signing in permanent ink”
Wow, permanent ink. I’m so impressed by the seriousness of these students.
No need to do homework tonight—they should party to celebrate the good feeling of their new resolve.
Posted by H. Dumpty at 4:01 PM on April 11
Here I always thought high school students who dropped out did so because they thought schoolwork was harder than a lifetime of the sort of menial jobs they’d have to look foreward to if they didn’t graduate.
Many of us dropped out because we saw the curriculum for exactly what it was: Socialist indoctrination with a lot of pointless busy work thrown in for good measure.
Posted by qwerty at 9:45 PM on April 11
“Unable to do the assignment, unable to even identify what questions they needed to ask so the could understand the material they sat there..soon the excuses began, sickness, family problems, room mate problems etc etc.”
“On the last day of class, the black students would stay behind and wait in line to talk to the teacher and give them a song and dance routine about why they didn’t attend class, why they missed a test or a project, and argue why it was critical for their financial aid or standing to ‘pass’ this class”
Both posts describe my teaching experience admirably. When Tyrone (yes, his real name) was about to fail my class for the second consecutive semester, I was hauled into the office of our department head and “asked” to pass him. “He’s the right color,” this eminent scholar said with a shrug.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 10:13 PM on April 11
I saw it as socialist indoctrination, too, having grown up in liberal Boulder, Colorado (graduated in 1984.) Not only did I figure I had nothing better to do at that age than attend high school, I also saw the liberal drivel for what it was quite early on. I regard both that experience and my undergrad days at UC Santa Cruz as a sort of vaccination which seems to have worked quite well.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 5:27 PM on April 12