 Dear friends, I write to ask you to dig deep and send a check to Bennett College for women. For fiscal reasons, we are at serious risk of losing our accreditation with the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges, SACS. What an irony. Bennett College was the first historically black college to receive SACS accreditation. We have launched a campaign to save Bennett College. As of today, we are close to 75 percent towards having the $5 million needed to keep the doors open. It is the only issue that puts us at risk with the accrediting body. Our academic programs are not and have never been an issue. Sad, isn't it? Very sad. When attending a graduation at Bennett two years ago, I found myself staring at a face that felt very familiar. She stared back. We realized at the same time that we were looking at a face that we had not seen since 1965, the year that I graduated. It was the face of my freshman little sister. She epitomizes a typical Bennett graduate, an education major, who became principal of a school in the District of Columbia, a school where students consistently performed above average. She later became the program manager for NASA's Educator Astronaut program. Another classmate, also an education major, was the first African-American and woman to lead as superintendent at the Guilford County, North Carolina School District, and she brought forth a then novel idea. Keep kids in school, engage them, even though you have suspended them, in how suspension was born. A music teacher and a choir director at a challenging high school in the District of Columbia also epitomizes Bennett College. In 1988, while watching the NBC Today show, the choir from Eastern High School was featured, having won the International Youth and Music Festival in Vienna. The director was asked how the students learned to sing in several foreign languages. Her answer, one syllable at a time. That same classmate was consistently the choral director for the White House Christmas and Kennedy Center Honors programs. Moments and classmates like these, I will never forget. They are representative of Bennett College graduates, women who have become leaders in their field, women who serve the greater good of us all. Recently, another Bennett graduate visited the Bay Area to lecture at the University of California San Francisco's Medical School. Her recently published book, Medical Bondage, Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, has Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens, who earned her PhD from UCLA, lecturing all over the world and moving up rapidly in the academy. Many are award-winning teachers and professors. One, a 2013 graduate, won her first electoral effort and became the first teacher to serve on the Berkeley California School Board. This is only five years after her graduation from Bennett College. There are other extraordinary Bennett alumni. The first woman surgeon in the South and the first African-American woman to become a fellow in the American College of Surgeons. The first African-American woman dentist in the state of Indiana and a fellow in the American College of Dentistry, my late sister. The founding trustee of the Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York. The first woman director of the Peace Corps, whose successful leadership demonstrated that women were equally affected to do any job. Her work resulted in the elimination of gender as a qualification for overseas staff positions. The first African-American assistant attorney general for the state of Massachusetts, who later became first national president of the YWCA. The ambassador of peace for the city of Hiroshima, Japan. A physicist who led the U.S. Department of Energy and International Atomic Energy Agency, nuclear safeguards, inspection developer of the Harvard Divinity School Women's Studies and Religion Program. The first African-American mayor of Greensboro, North Carolina. The award-winning screenwriter for the loving story. Bennett graduates the lawyers, doctors, dentists, scientists, business owners, and teachers, and yes, incredible mothers all serve in the greater good of us all. Bennett College graduates do the extraordinary and extraordinary ways and impact others positively in the process. Bennett women were the force behind the Greensboro movement. It was orchestrated on Bennett's campus. This effort shifted the civil rights movement toward a new level of activism. Bennett women consistently engaged in community services. They're required part of our academic curriculum. And we're all raised in activism and can have consistently since 1937, when they were the first to demonstrate at movie theaters. Then because of how African-Americans were featured in film. In November 1979, members of the Klan and the American Nazi Party murdered the president of Bennett College, the Stephen government. And five others who were demonstrating in support of black textile workers. This has come to be known as the Greensboro massacre. The first African-American woman to become president of a four-year college was Dr. Willoughby Player. It was during her presidency that SACS accredited Bennett. She opened the doors of Bennett to Dr. Martin Luther King when no other institution in Greensboro would allow him to speak. That we cannot come up with $5 million at the drop of a hat, so to speak. Connects us to the very real financial position of the most hard-working society-serving individuals, and particularly to black women and men. Men and alumni are the number two in HBCU you're giving, even though we're smaller and have fewer graduates than all of the other HBCUs. We're a small liberal arts college for women, and I've always topped the list of HBCU graduates who give back to their college. We love, appreciate, and respect our alma mater, and we will not let her fall. Recently, I was introduced to one who has access to donors interested in providing funding to Bennett College. I was asked to complete a wish list for Bennett, to provide and justify a level of funding that would move Bennett forward to a place where she is physically stable, able to provide resources to students in need, while continuing to educate women who seek to become their best, women who seek to serve and give back. We drafted a document that would lead Bennett to self-sufficiency, an important component of any significant HBCU wish list. While feeling it too good to be true, it seemed entirely plausible that one aware of what Bennett College has accomplished and the issues that a private college has been at face, it would surely see the benefit in providing some substantial resources that would prepare women to serve in much needed capacities throughout this nation, indeed throughout the world. We felt, what do we have to lose? It was a time well spent developing a wish list for Bennett, a list to fund programmatic opportunities that would eliminate the painful decisions that most private HBCUs have to make all the time to stay afloat. It fostered in a few of us a sense that we can and will move this needle forward and on solid ground once and for all. Your contribution at this time has the potential of moving this needle once and for all. Bennett Bells are women who are tired of being sick and tired. They want to see Bennett re-engineered such that she will find creative ways to stabilize her existence and move forward for all eternity. Our board and our alumni are working on that re-engineering plan to sustain us far beyond the $5 million. If you're inclined, or even if you are not, please give whatever you are able to Bennett. Please note that your gift is to the Alumni Annual Fund. Your gift will be unrestricted and considered raised to the efforts of a Bennett alumna. Or if you're inclined, simply give without attribution. Please direct your contributions to Bennett College, Attention to the Office of Institutional Advancement, 900 East Washington Street, Greensboro, North Carolina, 27401, or you may go to the Bennett website at www.BNNETT.edu. That's www.BNNETT.edu. If you have received this, you might not know me. We surely crossed paths at some point. Thank you for all that you do. Kindest regards and heartfelt appreciation, Marilyn Mackle, Bennett College alumna, 1965.