 HBCU Digest Radio, Digest After Dark. Welcome back to conversations with young alumni from historically black colleges and universities. We got my line brother, KD, frat brother, Eric, Taylor the Hamptonian, Oona the Hamptonian, Dr. Eatman, I'm sorry, we will shame accordingly lately. Winston getting them into school and then Tiffany who was supposed to be thrown off the show, I asked her back on because truth be told, throwing her off the show might lower our ratings, because she did graduate from Howard. We're very happy to be on series 142 HBCU Radio at Howard University, so let's not do that. Let's get into the conversation first. We are going back to school in a matter of weeks. What we've seen in the last few weeks is a number of institutions, I know of at least, at least 50 that have posted some form of how they're gonna go back to school. There's a number of private HBCUs that are gonna be doing distance education only. And then there are some that are or most that are gonna be doing a hybrid model. And even some that have announced that they were gonna be doing a hybrid model have said that they are reconsidering the way that that will look. So instead of some doing online and some being on class or on campus, they're kind of massaging that so that you can choose which one you wanna take advantage of. So I would go around the horn and ask each of you guys over the summer which has been rough on everybody, sticking in the house, getting ratchet on social media, looking out for loved ones. What do you think about HBCUs getting ready to go back in some form? And are you concerned about the safety of the students, faculty, staff at your alma mater or just at HBCUs in general? So Tiff, since you were supposed to be thrown off, let's start with you. On mute. Let's go to somebody who's not on mute. Go ahead, Tiff. Now you're back, go ahead. So I feel two ways. I feel like I should be last though because I work at an HBCU, so I really should be last, but okay. That should make you first. You're on the ground. Anyways, I feel two ways. Part of me is like, how can we keep everybody safe if we invite everybody back or make it possible for them to come back? The conversation has been around little kids or elementary school, middle school age kids, high school kids in their classrooms, not necessarily around grown adults in a residential living facility or residential living type of community. And I just get a little nervous because I know like in like regular times without a pandemic going on, it's a whole lot of disease that just goes around. Oh my God. It's so no for real. And we're back. No, no, no. I'm serious. I really feel like how are we gonna keep people safe when you can't stop people from having the sex? You can't stop people from- The sex. We are really back. This is, we never missed a beat. We really came back the sex. All right, go ahead on. You can't stop people who are student athletes from practicing. You can't stop people from gathering. Like you can suggest very strictly, hey, don't do XYZ, but do we even have the manpower to keep them from doing XY and Z? The answer to that is no. I mean, in a clear no, and we live in a democratically free country. Taylor, you also, I mean, not to cut you off, but I ask Taylor, because you also work on a campus. Is that a good point? Do you have apprehensions given the freedoms that students will have that the university just won't be able to control whatever spring may come of it? So first, even going back to your first question that you asked, I don't agree when institutions are saying that they're gonna come back, whether it is hybrid or just bringing students back fully. That is my personal belief. I don't agree with it, because no matter what, as Tiff stated, as we've all been saying right now, it's impossible to keep folks restrained to the ways that they need to be in order for cross-contamination to happen, in order for you to stay up. So just even from a public health standpoint, it's for me impossible. And it feels very much with a trigger warning to harm coming. It feels almost like sometimes we're putting folks into death missions to almost say like, be okay with you can possibly contract COVID, possibly die to come back. And I'm never going to be okay with that. So my alma mater, Hampton is moved to completely virtual. Even before they made the decision, because I have a younger cousin who was going to be a future Hamptonian in the fall. And up until July, when they said that they're moving completely virtual, she had already talked to me and I was like, I don't think you should go. And those are hard conversations to have. And also I think the other thing about it is, that people are like, you know, we'll have all these regulations, we'll have all these things and all those to have students not do things. And even for institutions, I think about like, okay, what type of surveillance and policing are we now going to enforce on students to ensure? What if students do break the rules and regulations around COVID? Does that mean they get kicked out of school? Are we not impacting that? Are we impacting their financials? All for us to keep them in these spaces. And I think it's a larger conversation. And it's a difficult one because also housing is your money maker. Let me kick it to Eric. You also work at an institution. Is it, have they been able to communicate to the staff the bottom line necessity of this? Like, yes, we would prefer not to have students back but have they made an effective case to say, okay, well, we got to do this. We got to try or just risk going out of business. And is that a similar case that can be made by black colleges considering that black people are disparately affected by COVID-19? So it's weird because it's coming on COVID really exacerbated issues at schools already we're facing and dealing with, right? And that's not like, that's not, and I mean literally schools because I don't work at HBCU unfortunately. However, my school has absolutely no idea what to do and they literally been trying to make decisions on the fly as things have come out. I mean, my school has multiple campuses. They had one set of expectations and rules for that one campus, another campus was supposed to go back to actually in-person courses. Another campus was only bringing back freshmen. Another campus was going completely virtual and all these different, all these things were like being sent out at the same time. And students were actually saying, well, we want to go back on campus because that school is going back on campus, right? So I think in respect to all this, I mean, and the staff is stuck, right? I mean, in my role, I advise students. I'm trying to tell them that, you know, trying to plan out for the semester and I can't really give them a set plan because I'm not giving a set plan. And, you know, coming, you know, this is officially, you know, August 6th when we're recording this, we've been inside the house for five months, right? And I looked at some of the schools that are doing things somewhat the right way. You have some of our HBCUs are saying, you know what, we're going to enforce, you know, we want to try to, you know, do the things that we know work, right? Because we know the touch points work when it comes to first year experience and making sure that student success is the actual outcome. And I believe that's important too. And I believe most schools, not just HBCUs, but most schools are greatly unprepared in knowing how to create that first year experience that makes sure that students come back for the second year successfully in a virtual environment. And I think that's a larger conversation at least we had. You kick it to the essential conversation for Winston and Oona because both of you guys work with students who are considering HBCUs that are coming out of high school. So when you look at these testimonials about, we're not ready, a lot of people are afraid. Oona, I'll start with you, sis. If you're talking to somebody from New York, New York City, what do you tell them? Because there may be restrictions on that kid coming to a campus, because they're coming from a place where while numbers are going down, they may still say, well, we need you to quarantine for 14 days. Does that impact the college decision? Does that impact the way that you engage with that student about where you wanna go and what's the best fit for you? Well, I think a big part of that is finding out what the institution is doing because if you're going, if you're like, so I'm here in Brooklyn and the numbers have said, like we've gotten control of it. We've had, it's done certain things. We've done a lot of tracing. I don't see a lot of tracing being done. So when they're going to different places, like I've taken two round trips, one to Atlanta, the next one to New Orleans and they were taking temperatures. They were asking for your information that they could get back to you just in case somebody says that, you know, they have XYZ. So as a student, they need to be their own advocate, right? They need to find out what is that institution doing and how do they fit into that space? But that's also a part of transparency as it pertains to the institution. And what I'm finding is that a lot of institutions aren't being transparent, what they're doing currently and what they're going to do moving forward. Winston, what about in your case? So you get them into school from Detroit. I'm sure a lot of parents are asking, you know, because the HBCUs are, for the most part, a good distance away from Detroit, no matter which way you're going, how are you communicating to parents and students about, you know, what, here are your opportunities? But guess what, a school that may be a good fit for you, maybe a spot where it's like, you know what, I'm not sending my baby down there. It's not healthy. No, so that is, it's a real thing. I mean, it's hard. It's been touched on already before, I think that the choices by institutions have affected some of our students' choices who were planning on going to Hampton, for instance, to Taylor's point, a young lady who was going to Hampton we had this year who it affected her decision that they were being all virtual, she decided to go to FAMU instead. So, you know, that affected her choice. And then there's a couple of young people who were going to Spelman and also affected their choice because Spelman was going completely virtual. So it is a real conversation. And to Oona's point, it is a lot about people doing their research and understanding what things are in place, what the institution is expressing that they plan on doing to come back, you know, what's going on. And I think speaking to a point that you made in the digest article about this creates an opportunity for HVC as a whole. You know, if they can really be transparent, if they can really talk about what's going on and take advantage of being able to do more with less and make adjustments on the fly the way that they typically have to do, I think it can be a benefit to these young people that can potentially be headed to the institutions as a matter of them kind of stepping up and being that transparent in the space of what they're doing and what they can do for young people that may be unique because like how they've had to handle things in the past. But I mean, for us, it's very much like Oona said, trying to make sure that the parents and the young people are informed. A lot of them seem to be already, they're on social media and Twitter and Instagram and seeing updates about what institutions are doing, what things. And I mean, we've already got like, we got kids going down Louisiana this week to Southern and Xavier and they're making those adjustments right now on the fly. These babies want to be on campus. And that's the, it seems wild to me, I guess as a parent and as somebody who's older but Katie, I would ask you like, so imagine you're a student and I'll give you another example. Imagine you're a non-traditional student who's not bothered by like, yo, I got to get out of my mom and dad's house. You know what I mean? Like they could be working, they could be on their own. What does it look like when you're talking about, not, you know, working professionals or folks coming out of the military who want to go to an HBCU and there's a health concern there. And so it's interesting that that question got pushed to me because in my new role as an educator, right? I worked with the student transitioning into college. And so it's, I understand that for a lot of them, my school is a safe haven, right? That's the place where they get a meal. They'll be nurtured to a degree. They'll be prepared for something that they don't even understand. And then we help them transition to that next step, right? And so it's like, all right, how do I tell these kids? I want you to do that, but I don't want you to do it right now. Even though they've been yearning for it for the past, what, three years, just because of how traumatic the high school experience can be, especially in our communities where the resources are already slim. And then you're going into the challenge that it is a HBCU where the resources are slim. And sometimes they feel slimmer because you have to do more on your own. It's a tough balance. And I'm not going to be the one to say worst yet, right? But these kids, they have a little more resolve than I anticipated. But at the same time, they've also been in the house since March. And so they're just yearning to see other people so that not their parents are not their siblings, right? And they maybe don't have, they don't have the technology really what we found out was that they don't have the technology really to connect with each other on a regular basis like we do. I could easily call you whenever I feel like it for them. They got to wait for their mother's phone. You know, it's stuff like that going on. So I don't know what to tell them to be honest. I would expect that the universities would be able to guide them. But again, a lot of them are moving on the fly. And I can't even be angry that they don't know what to do next because none of us do. It's not our fault. That's the critical point as we finish out this first segment. Because, you know, for everybody who's looking at their HBCU like, why don't you make a decision? Why don't you stick to one plan versus another? A lot of them are being pushed, particularly the public institutions are being pushed by what the states are doing. And in some cases what the larger PWI flagships are doing. It's hard for Morgan or Coppin or Buoy, UMES here in Maryland to say what they gonna do at the University of Maryland College Park and say, no, we doing something else. Yeah. You know what I mean? To that point, look at North Carolina right now. Exactly. Nobody has come out with a plan. No, not even that. UNC Chapel Hill is going back to in-person courses for the fall. That doesn't bother me as much though because with adults they understand that it's not the classroom that scares me. It's everything else. It's the community. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying though. The classroom scares me just as much. I mean, you're right. I mean, because you still sit in the room with an HVAC blowing something. You are in the room. You are in there. There is no air circulation. And so even coming from a medical school where I work, it's a very, all of it is it's not in a more so entering outside has a little bit more safeguards. And I don't even believe in the full safeguard aspect. When we're talking about closed enclosed spaces and we're talking about 50 minute classes, when we're talking about two hour lectures, when we're talking about sitting in spaces, what's the cleaning process in between? Are we cutting classes? Sure, it's a lot to deal with. And the big thing that I tell and talk to folks about is that we're all assessing risk. We are all figuring out risk management when it comes to this. And it's hard work. And unfortunately how capitalism informs this, we're doing risk management on lives in order for us to keep institutions open, to keep social mobility going, to keep upward mobility going. Cause what does it mean for a student to take a year off? You know what, no. And we have skills there. Well, I'll tell you what, let's cut real quick. Let's take the first break. Cause I gotta make sure we pay these bills on serious 142 HBC radio, our university. But when we come back, we're gonna continue this. And hopefully that segues into the conversation we wanna have about elite HBCs and elite HBC gifts. That I just have to talk with you right back. That I just have to talk and we're back. And we're gonna continue the conversation about the angles on returning to campus this fall. And brothers and sisters, y'all brought up something that's critical that I had never even considered in terms of the academic enrichment part of this. And Taylor, I want you to put 20 seconds behind what you just said, the example you gave about a particular course and how the dynamic or the experience of that course changes when you take it from home. Yeah, so I was just thinking about when we moved to virtual spaces and we want our students to show up fully, virtually and recognizing that they are in their homes as some of our students found being a way up to college in their classroom settings as they're safe spaces to share their actual thoughts. So I imagine students talking about queer or gender and sexuality or sex education in their courses. And what if they're coming from a conservative home and they're now in their living room because that's where the best Wi-Fi is, but they don't feel safe in those spaces to talk about in their courses. So now they're not engaged. Maybe they aren't paying attention or these are the things I had to think through this summer while teaching my summer program and recognizing how am I gonna utilize the chat? How are folks gonna be able to share openly to still have that development and identity development and talk a lot about in our courses and growth because when students go off to college typically they're taking courses that they're like, I never would have thought. How many of us talk about life changing courses we've had because of the conversations we've had in class? In the classroom. Eric, you were gonna add to that. Yeah, so like, I mean, and I think, I think the conversation has to be academic focus. I know higher education is a big business whatnot, right? And we're seeing the business side of higher education really guiding a lot of these decisions. But as Taylor just kind of pointed out, I mean, you lose a lot of it. My cousin is about to start his freshman term at Grambling. He's from Washington DC. We went to Dunbar High School. He's going to Grambling. I think he actually like moved into Grambling like earlier this week, right? They had to go back early. He's a nursing major. There's certain things that you just need to be in a physical place to actually be able to do. Let certain labs have to take place. Certain things have to like take place in a certain fashion. And I think if schools were even thinking from that perspective, we'll be better off and be able to move ahead. But on top of that, I think back to my freshman year of somebody stealing my laptop at the beginning of my second semester and having to go to the computer lab to use a laptop just to do my work. What do you do for somebody who literally didn't have access to a laptop until they got to school? So, I mean, I think right now, like I said, COVID is exacerbating issues that have always existed, but they've always said, oh, well, it's for you to fix it as a student because you're not an adult. And that's just really not the reality of the situation. No, we had a young lady who was we found, we just found out like, you know, you're checking in with students. You're trying to keep track of them in the midst of a pandemic. And then we're doing follow-up with the institutions we have relationship with them and they're letting us know what people are doing or whatever. FERPA's good. We're good on FERPA. We got our things signed just to be clear. But, you know, we're just saying, I'm just saying. Hey, I know, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, keep it up there. But anyway, we're checking in with the, and we find out like she failed every class. We're like, well, why did you fail every class? Well, I tried to start doing all my assignments on my phone, but I couldn't get everything done through my phone. And we're like, well, then you can speak up. We, you know, we've been trying to reach out, but obviously things going on, you losing your phone because we in the pandemic and you can't pay bills. And I mean, it's all these other dynamics we're talking about. And then same thing with like, few students we had Xavier and Louisiana to the point Eric's point about they're studying the nursing and sciences and they can't do labs physically because they're, and they're just struggling with keeping up with the regular coursework because it's different than being on campus when you're in a lab and you can ask questions and do things and physically be in it and you can't be in it that way. And now it's a whole other thing for you to navigate through. And then, and then one more thing I want to add, let's keep in mind that throughout the pandemic we lost over 50 million jobs in this country at once, right? And so think about that first year college student who was semi-relying on their parent to provide some level of support. And now that parent is bringing in no money. What does that child do? That would have been me as the child. My dad would have lost his job. It would have been just because you may sit in middle class doesn't mean I wouldn't check away from poverty. Right, right. And that's the scary part. And I think that's the factor that a lot of the HBC leaders as I talked to them are most worried about. I think even more than the kids really, really wanting to come back to campus and they're concerned about how safe can I keep these babies? It's two things, two things I hear more often than not. One, what happens to the students that lose a job and they're putting themselves through school or their parents are paying to get them to help get them through school? That's number one, because I may lose them and they may not come back. And the other thing is if we got to shut this thing down again, because the numbers go out of control and we got to send everybody back again, how many are not going to come back? And that's what really kills me about this whole process, especially with the lack of leadership from the federal level, because we're not taking a humane approach. We're just not. It's all about the business. And right now, business shouldn't matter. We got to keep people alive so we can rebuild this country. But it's a part of it that I keep hearing. And I understand what y'all are saying. I agree with, we have to have some human agency about this. But there's a legit concern that, and I heard this from a president who says, you know, if it were up to me, we would always be learning online until everybody was vaccinated. But unless we figure out how to live with this virus, what is gonna happen to the country if you can't cure it? Or if it takes more than two or three years to get everybody vaccinated, are you gonna say that we're gonna, are we gonna keep stopping and starting? Or do you say there is a way that you physically resume life as we know it as Americans with a virus? You know what I mean? Like just like, you know, we deal, you deal with there's certain rules you put in place to deal with drunk drivers. There's certain rules you put in place to deal with catching the flu. There's certain rules you put in place to have say, there's certain things that you gotta do that can create danger for you. So do we have to say like, rather than stopping and starting, which could be dangerous globally for the economy, which could be dangerous everywhere for somebody's family earnings, do you just, when is the time where you say, we gotta live with this thing? So I think that's a valid question, but to a degree, it's so much forecasting and we can't see that far down the line of what we wanna be next. But I think this does provide an opportunity for our institutions to do something that they're not doing. And it's gonna be an unpopular thing to say, but it's also very important. Over the course of the quarantine, what I found out is that there's a certain amount of schools that actually happen to have larger athletic budgets than they do institutional research budgets. And my question is, right now in the pandemic, right? Sports for many of our schools, for most of our schools, we're not going to call out ones like saying they're gonna have a season, right? But for most of our schools, I'm asking ourselves like, okay, with our budgets, what are we doing to improve our campuses so that they can't offer hybrid courses? What are we doing to our classroom so they're going away from blackboards in chalk to actually being able to, I don't know, have a live broadcasted presentation inside the classroom so that, yeah, a professor might have to show up and teach a classroom there, but everybody can log in where they, if they have access to a computer. My question now is that given the situation, and I understand that our schools don't have necessarily money or funds, but we can do something about applying the grants. We can do something to try to do something that's different, but as we know, a lot of our schools are doing things as they've always done it. But right now we're in a position where you have to think differently. You have to approach it differently. The question is, where are the leaders of our schools going to do to make sure that they can still make, give an educational experience that students can learn from, given where we currently are. And I think that, I don't know what the answer is because it's going to look different for every single campus, but if we're still sitting here talking about, oh yeah, we're going to, our student fees are $700, $750, $823 because we still got to make sure these student fees are going on and you can't even be transparent about how the student fees are going towards education. If we can't see improving in our classrooms as far as how education is being offered, then how can you tell a student that they should still continue to go there in the midst of this pandemic? I think, so we've had a pandemic before, right? And there's history there. I wonder how many institutions are actually pulling from that. While things have changed, there's still foundational information and ways in which they handled it that they were able to prosper till now. So what are they looking at? Because I've been looking to see what Hampton was doing in 1918. I want to know. This is about pushback. As it pertains to that aspect. That's a good question. I think it's the only cover I can get in universities. A lot of that was guided by the federal government. They were listening to what the federal people were saying as to how to respond to the pandemic at the time and then reacting to them. Right now it's all controlled by the local and state governments. Maryland is vastly different from Alabama. We had the benefit of Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland competing against each other for research in general. So of course they're gonna give us the best information that they can. But is the University of Mississippi's hospital system working like that? You know what I mean? Are they as revered as Johns Hopkins? You know, it's really, it's the lack of leadership at the time that's causing all of the confusion. If you ever thought about it. I hear you, but there's still, there's still something to pull from history. Sure, sure. And that's what I'm looking at. Yes, federal government isn't doing what we think they should. However, we've been black. Yeah. We've been attacked. Yeah. Hello? Yeah. Let me just say, let me just round out this part. I know we extended this and we're gonna have to push one of our savings back. But I want to give Tiffany an opportunity because people, she's in a hotel room on travel. People next to her room are not social distancing, not following safe guidelines. Tiffany, do you have anything to offer? Just considering that you're in proximity to people who are not practicing six-feet guidelines. Take them on mute. Yeah, take them on mute. Take them on mute. They're having the sex this one. They're having the sex. They're having the sex. It's quiet right now. It's quiet right now. We're going to get kicked off after the first episode. If you're going to try to drop something in the jet, like I wouldn't go missing. Yeah. I just wanted to be transparent about why. You couldn't jump in. No. Nothing was said, said a lot of points that I agree with. I do want to say that like, no, I'm not going to say that. You got it. Goodbye. So we're going to cut here. And then we definitely want to get to an important conversation because one, two, three of us attended institutions that got a rack of money recently. And one, two, three, four of us went to schools that did not. So this is going to be a, this is going to be a, this is going to be a balanced conversation. What is the math count on this? I'm going to be serious. Eight, twenty, I count one. What's he going to be trying? Are you trying to be quite serious? No, I'm also counting Winston. His school did not go to F. Oh yeah. My school definitely didn't get no money. So we're going to have a conversation about elite HBCUs getting elite HBCU money. This is a hot topic. A lot of people are still talking about it. This is Dodgers After Dark. We'll be right back. Dodgers After Dark. I'm going to adjust her head wrap. Tiffany trying to figure out how she can calm down folks next door. Let's get into the conversation about Mackenzie. Scott's, is it Mackenzie Scott? Her big gift to several HBCUs. All of them private. All of them regarded among, I guess, the elite class of black colleges. If you want to say that. And this is part of a $1.7 billion philanthropic effort on her part, which also included the Thurger Marshall College Fund, UNCF. So in theory, she just really gave millions to all HBCUs, but it was six that stood out for substantial gifts ranging from about 20 million to 40 million dollars. So by my count, as I look at the video for those who went to HBCUs, myself, Katie, Eric, we did not go to institutions that received gifts. Taylor Una and Tiffany went to HBCUs that received gifts. I will start with the, the luckiest of us who went to institutions that got millions of dollars. Do you, let me just ask the question flat out. Do you subscribe to the idea that wealth that is coming to Howard Morehouse Spelman should be more evenly distributed among other HBCUs? Oh, and I will, I will start with you because you're probably the most drunk out of all of us for so far. Why are you trying to blame me, friend? They try to blame me. Do the good doctor like that. I definitely think I don't subscribe to that. Okay. I don't. Because when you look at it, why are they giving the funding? How did their name, how did their name come to the front? And it's usually me, me and Twin, me and Tay, and Tiff were talking about this earlier. It's with reason. Like people don't give money just to like, it's, it's a connection. If somebody asked me, Una, do you want to give money? Sure, if I had it, right? Do you want to give money? And they say, oh, you want to give to the neuroscience department? I don't really have a connection there. But if you're going to talk about aqua Latinos at HBCU, yeah, I'm with that. How can I help? So people aren't making a connection and Tay definitely made that point when we were talking earlier that people aren't making the connections and aren't looking at their alumni. Taylor, you want to elaborate on that? I think going to your original question where you were like, should it be distributed equally? Or at least more evenly. I don't think it'll ever be equal. But I think. I want to say evenly because I pushed back on this and it's not even in the regards of supporting Hampton. I think folks should be arguing for like, they should receive the monies that they need. If they say it equally, is that going to be equitable for them? If McKenzie gave you the same amount, will it do the same work that you need for your institution? So I pushed back there on that because I want people to do equitable donorships. So if you're going to give to a smaller HBCU and a larger HBCU, I don't think they should get the same amount of monies. If you do an environmental scan properly, you would see a $20 million donation will look different than a $10 million donation. But it may line up together in an equitable way. So that's why I pushed back there. The other thing with that and how we were talking about earlier, I don't. Of course, I am someone that believes that other HBCU should always get money. But I also want to remove away from the narrative where people say Hampton Howard Spelman, Morehouse Tuskegee don't need the money because that is complete and utter nonsense. Yeah, that's stupid. I don't like that. That has been the argument that has been frustrating me because it's used one to silence. And of course, to create this notion that it reminds me of when you tell someone, like, oh, you're doing well so you don't need my support. When it's like just because I may be doing well here doesn't mean I don't need assistance and support there. So that's the argument that has been frustrating me when we talk about the Mackenzie gift that Hampton Howard, we didn't need it. And it's like, we did. But and let's talk about the fact that we considered the quote unquote elite because I know that gets on my nerves there in the Ivy Leap aspect. If we need it, my goodness, everybody else needs a hell of a more than what we need. So that's what was annoying me because folks were saying on Twitter and Facebook and even in alumni groups that Hampton and Howard didn't need it. And I'm like, yes, we, yes, we do. But there's this notion that also comes from sometimes lack of transparency from institutions where we give off of the side that we're doing well. And so when we do admit that we need it, people are like, y'all lying. Like y'all just shot it. But it's like, no, we need it. All of us need it. And so that has been my argument. I would never say that Hampton doesn't need support and funding. I will argue that other institutions, of course, need different type of funding and even more. But I will never ever say that Hampton and Howard are so elite, they don't need it. And that's where my issue has been because it creates this false narrative and it creates this disruption within our community that moves us away from collectivism because it creates a way to say, y'all don't need that money. Give it to us. I'm going to come back to tipping in her air guns real quick because she does think Howard is elite, but fake like she didn't. So we're going to come back to you in a second. Let me go to you real quick because you went to Winston, right? And Winston recently has gotten not multimillion dollar gifts, but sizable and high profile donations. Stephen A. Smith, Chris Paul. I mean, so you have, you know, celebrities that have ties to Winston went to Winston giving some money. So do you think that for you, me and Katie who went to state schools, are you of the belief that, you know, should it should it be fairer? And if so, well, let me ask you this question. Do you think that the public HBCUs, according to some people just aren't doing enough to get attract those gifts? Because Winston is clearly isn't that it just isn't getting multimillion dollar gifts. I think so first, I'm going to start off with something that's a little that's going to piss a lot of people off and it is what it is. Most of y'all bammers that responded really don't care about the money. Y'all care about the cloud. Y'all care that you can't go on social media and brag that your school has got its own nation size. I don't care. That's fair. That's fair. I'm like, and as somebody who went to a school whose endowment is one of my schools endowments is under $50 million. Let's just be like the school that I intended, right? Another school I intended is lower than that. It's definitely lower than that. UDC don't even get support inside the city as far as funding, right? I'm not going to get mad at McKinsey Scott for not delaying. I'm going to get increasingly upset about the fact that over the last 35 years, we've seen public funding for education decrease, right? That's a larger conversation than it used to take place, right? But if we're having this conversation, if there's a couple of points that are important, right? The Institute of Science work for that has a billion dollar endowment. They will tell you that they have a $200 million deficit. All schools need money. It's just the way the education is working right now. It's the way it goes, right? Like, we don't even support it. Like, as a country, we don't support education, but we want people with jobs. That's a whole different conversation, right? On the other side of it all, and I'm going to directly quote you, Jared. If a school can't convince your ass to donate $25 every single year, then how are you going to convince somebody who ain't even heard of your school to donate $100,000, let alone a million, right? And to build upon that, and I got to give a shout out to my man who's not honest, but he and I talk about this off the internet via text message. What is the branding of your institution? And the reason I say that is the fact that there are different tiers of branding. I'm not going to say which schools educate better than others because it's very subjective. The way that we define student success in itself is subjective. But what is the brand of your institution? Howard's brand is the fact that if you're black and you're going to go to Howard, it's a great change that you're going to be able to do some dope stuff in life. Howard claims people who ain't even graduated. Oh, Howard Schatz. Go ahead. No, look, that's their academic brand. If I ask some people right now, what is the academic brand of FAMU? Or do they have an academic brand? Some of them, if you ask them about FAMU, they're going to bring up the band. Guess what? People don't donate the bands. People like bands don't bring in money. Oh my God. That's our philanthropic. We're going to get thrown off. No, listen, listen. People can be upset at me for it. But if we want to be transparent and have a real conversation, there's a lot of schools that we don't know about your school unless we talk about something that nobody's putting money towards unless you have people dancing and making music in front of a crowd. Oh my God. The philanthropic is not going to be there. So you have to ask yourself as a leader of that institution, one, or as an alumni of the institution, what are you saying to the people that work at your institution about the academic brand? Are they able to attract partnerships with people that are in their immediate area? Probably not. And if they're not, go talk to them. Don't complain about that, Howard and Hampton, because they're doing their job in getting the money that they're doing. You just sound like a hater, because now you don't have the ability to brag on the internet. So I don't care. I'm happy that Howard and Hampton and Xavier and Tuskegee got the money they got. I don't have any beef with that. It's my job to donate the money that I can to Winston and UDC. It's my job to be like, hey, leadership to the schools that I've attended, what are y'all doing to make sure that professors are submitting grant applications? What are y'all doing to make sure that job progressed academically so their child brand is better? I don't have time to concentrate on the school that I didn't go to. And it's a shame that so many people do. You know what? And I think you're actually hitting on the point because I had a conversation with somebody the other day who asked me how much publicity did Lemoine Owen's $40 million gift get? And so I went back and looked. The Memphis Commercial Appeal covered it. That's the Memphis paper where Lemoine Owen is. And it was not in the Wall Street Journal. It was not in the New York Times. It was not in USA Today. And so there is something to be said, you know, because that was a school that is way off the radar in terms of elite, quote, unquote, HBCUs. And for my money, that was just as important a gift not just because of its size, but when you look at the terms of the donation, that was for their endowment. So they're going to have $40 million that will sit in the bank and make money for them in perpetuity forever. Right? That may not be a gift that, you know, Robert Smith's thing at Morehouse will do. That doesn't make you more money. That pays off debt. Mackenzie Scott's gift doesn't make you more money unless you use that funding to do something with auxiliary revenue sources. Tiff is itching to get to it. You fake like you don't think Howard is elite. So I'm going to give you your time to shine now. I never said that. I never said that. Actually, I'm one past podcast saying the exact opposite. But a point that I made and that I thought of when I first saw the six schools in particular is that these are HBCUs that fulfill a public interest. And so like when I'm seeing people talk about, well, if you give us that money or more money to do XYZ, we could do it too. And it's like, no, you'll fumble the bag first. Oh, cool. We're going to get the next person doing it. It's time to design programs. It's time to secure accreditation specific accreditation that's specific to the program and to a school. This is not what happens overnight. You would need the faculty. You would need the research. You would fumble the bag. That's a point. Tiffany, your point is so well taken. I'm not done. I'm not done. I'm not done. No, no. You'll fumble the bag. And it's like, I hate to say it, but I don't hate to say it. Like these schools are these schools for everybody. They get this money for a reason. You need to stay where you are. Get good grades. If you want to be a doctor, a doctor of whatever, pick your choice. Howard, pick your choice. You want to be a vet. You want to do something in agriculture. Then you go on to Tuskegee. Then you go on to Howard. Then you go on to Xavier, to Hampton. Like, stop. You don't have like your undergraduate institution. If it's not one of those or any others that people consider as top 10 or Black Ivy League, it's fine. You can go there for grad school. It's fine because the thought is they get this money to do what they've been doing. It'll be better by the time you get there. Why are you hating? Well, let me speak on the fumble the bag theory real quick. And I would say there is some truth to that. And that's necessarily that they would blow the money. But one of the questions that I think that all of us have posed and I think it's dangerous to put out there publicly, but it's a truth. So let's just do it. It's after dark. If you were to pay off any struggling HBCUs debt in total, capital financing, loans, all kinds of stuff, and you just said, fine, you have no debt going forward, then what happens tomorrow? They build up some more. That is the question that you have to ask. So if you're a school like St. August, for example, if you're a school like Bennett, you know, and you're sitting there with a lot of debt, and not necessarily because of incompetence. Some of it is just because, you know, you don't have the programs that attract a lot of students. Other institutions around you have built up. It could be that you have a loss of enrollment or a loss of just bodies in a state that are going to a school. I just talked to Johnny Tell about this. He said the birth rate is going down all over the place. You don't have as many people going to college. So this is an issue. I mean, it's not necessarily that President's blew it all the time, but the Tiffany's point about fumbling the bag, sometimes you can't help it. Your school just may be passed by in that sense and is not prepared for the industrial, the technological, the geographical revolutions that are going on around it. So we could pay off all your debt. We could save you, but you'll be safe for two years because you're still not going to have an infrastructure to get to get students in there. I think there is a conversation to be had about the trends that certain schools have because we know, like for instance, like, and I'm glad nobody did it. But what nobody cried for more is brown. I didn't know money. Oh. Hey, yo. Okay, so let me run this back. Anybody, let me run this back then. Anybody who was asking for more is brown to get any brick of that money is somebody who literally would say it's a sound investment to put their money in, put their money in horse racing. It's like, it's a trend that this money that you put into this thing is not going to aid in a return, right? There's certain things that we know. Some of these institutions that we talked about that receive the money, they literally are not going to be allowed to fail. Howard will never be allowed to fail. We just know this. It's literally primarily funded, earmarked funding, but it's primarily funded by federal government. A Carnegie-funded institution like Spellman or Rockefeller institutions like Spellman, they're not going to be allowed to fail. But guess what happens on the other end? Spellman produces. Howard produces. Like, we know these about these schools, right? I could sit here and say that my school produces, but my school, their branding is more regional. They're not going to get as much money as a Howard. And before we go on, I just want to say a small tidbit, and this is kind of influencing the larger conversation too. Do not confuse a school receiving funding because it's continually doing its job with the egos of people who may have went to that school who are pushing the narrative that their school is elite and you don't like the school because you don't like those people. Let me say real quick, because Katie and I, we both went to college in Baltimore, both went to state schools, right? And part of that conversation, they're saying, oh, you know, well, you could give it to public schools as well. There's two things I want to say about that. Number one, unlike a Morehouse and Spellman, Morgan and Coppin are pretty much going to have state money coming in some respect all the time every year. You're not going to let a state agency, a government agency fail. It's not going to close. They may try to merge it at some point, but it's a government agency. It's not going to stop. But then the other thing is it is difficult. If you look at what McKenzie Scott wrote on her, her medium piece, one of the things that she said was these institutions that I'm giving to have a track record of sustainability and performance, particularly in leadership. When you think about the public HBCUs, who gets screwed over more often than not by legislators and governors messing with the presidents, messing with the boards all the time. I'm going to let you have it because Coppin, they mess with Coppin all the time. How do you say Coppin can't get no money? How many times has Maryland been messing with Coppin? Right. That's what I've been thinking this whole time. Part of it is, yes, I am jealous. I would love for Coppin to get a gift of 10, 20 million dollars out of the blue. Who wouldn't want their school to have that? But then I don't get angry because then I also realize the state of Maryland ain't paid their dues as far as Coppin State University is concerned and they holding money. Let me text the state of Maryland before I text a philanthropist. My school was known for it. It was primarily a teacher college up until 1980, and then we became teaching and nursing. Those two professions, yeah, they paid well, especially in the state of Maryland, but not a million dollar well. That's okay because there's no shame in those jobs. I would much rather have all of those alumni paying $25, $30, $100 a year than to be chasing Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith because they got roots in the area for two million dollar gifts. It just doesn't make sense to me. What was the second question you asked, though? No, I just wanted you to speak on it because Coppin and Morgan, they generationally have been messed with. Messing with presidents, you messing with administration, you messing with funding, you try to give us a building with no chairs and desks in it. And make us wait five years for that to be outfitted with technology and all that stuff. But then you want to go and say, well, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go convince a white, uber rich person that you deserve it. It's not to play the victim. It is to contextualize our story. If you make it seem like it's real easy to convince these folks out here to give you money. We can't even convince us to give us the money. Yeah, and that's the trippy part, man. You got people from the 80s, 90s, early 2000s that had a bitter, bitter taste in their mouth about their experience at an HBCU. And moreover, I think, before I can get to Winston real quick, more of I think is disrespectful when we look at those kind of gifts like multi-million dollar gifts as the standard for philanthropy in the black community. And I think we talked about this before. If you just look at wealth gaps between white and black folks, if you just look at earning gas between white and black folks, if you got a brother or a sister giving you $10,000, that's a big gift. That's a major gift. And I wish that more HBCUs took that position. Morgan, I think our biggest gift in Morgan history is $10 million. It's $10 million. At Coppin, I think it was a retired couple that just left, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars to the school. It was profiled all in his papers. But that's nothing to laugh at. Somebody worked hard to give you that money. You know what I mean? Like, they worked for it. It ain't like they fell into some money and said, all right, well, I'm just going to pass this out to a couple of HBCUs. They worked and saved, retired and said, you know what, I ain't got no babies in the house. I ain't got nothing else to pay for. Let me give some money to the school. So I think we disrespect Chris Paul. We disrespect that retired couple. We disrespect Calvin and Tina Tyler at Morgan who gave $10 million and we just pass it over and it says, nobody gives anybody else anything. Yes, they do. You just didn't see it. But a big part of it, right. And that's it right there, that you don't see it. And about when it comes to giving money, the way that we operate as humans, right, the pro-social behavior in that when you see somebody giving, you then give. Why when you say that, oh, well, we got the highest amount that Morgan we have ever got was $10 million. People said who? Look at that, she laughing at Morgan because we only got 10 million. Why is this broadcast? Right. But this is what I'm saying though, right. And at what point, oh, I see somebody giving money. Oh, let me drop some guac. That's how it works. Why aren't we broadcasting these things? Even, I did a quick Google search before we got on just to see what would pop up. You know how far I had to dig to see, to see the Tyler's giving money? Why? And this is a constant. You don't have people giving funds. That's why on GoFundMe, they ask you, do you want to repost? Do you want to post that you just gave money? Because they know how it works. But you know what's funny though, even when you talk about the Tyler's, that student center's going to be named after them. So they're naming a building after them. They're honoring them as our all-time record donors. The school put coverage out about it. I mean, they got coverage about it, but it's not like, what can the school do to say, hey, don't forget the Tyler's gave us $10 million five years ago. You know what I mean? But what it is too is, they're not the only ones that have money that came out of mortgages. That's correct. True. But you know what though? Oh, well, the Tyler's just did this. Who else trying to step up and give money? And that's how that works. I mean, even on Facebook, when it comes to Hampton, and somebody dropped money, it's like, oh, I can't be outdone. Let me throw my little bit in there. And I throw 25. I don't even know how to play with this. What? Bear questions of mud, son. Like, early. And what so, I think the one thing that I think, when we talk about black people giving money, is that we are sometimes ashamed that we made it. So, it's not even that we won't give, but we'll give it none of the student, right? So I'll cut a $2,000 check. Just don't put my name in the paper, please. And I wonder how much of that is going on too. And that's true. But aside from that, when you do have the people who do, like when you know, like I said, going back to the GoFundMe's, there's mad people that put their name down. And you're like, wait, son gave $200 to the dude that house was burned down, bet, I'm gonna do three. He's my crap brother. I do that, yeah. And that's how it goes. Why aren't we playing on pure human emotion? Like that's what you gotta do. But when it comes down to it, we have to search for that information. I didn't see that. It wasn't readily available and that was what? I think 2016, I was there at Morgan. So, and I don't remember that. They put it out and I think that it can be, and this is to Eric's point, you just sometimes we just gotta deal with a certain reality. There are some schools that are powerhouses in their community and some schools are powerhouses in their region or their state. And some schools are just national institutions. And I don't think that we're that much different from PWIs doing this. Maybe it's true. I don't know it because I don't really deal with PWIs. But I would imagine that folks look at MIT and Stanford and Harvard and say, why do they get all the money? And how come, Mary Baldwin can't get any Skrilla? You know what I mean? Georgetown looks at that and I'm sure American looks at it and says, they don't. So, I'm gonna tell you where that conversation takes place inside the development office, inside the office for advancement. Those people in those offices have that conversation, but the students, it's rare. When Bloomberg gave out that money to Johns Hopkins, he didn't hear nothing about it at Georgetown. And nobody jumped out there and said, why does Johns Hopkins deserve a billion dollars? Yeah. And I think it also plays into the point too, where again, I like to remind people that we are still microcosms of a larger entity. We are still a part of higher ed. HBCUs are still a part of a higher education system. So the things that we experience are not unique to us and then they are unique to us. And I say that because sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves and don't understand that predominantly white institutions don't even put that much pressure on themselves. But we put it on ourselves, which then cause a rift. We then cause arguments. We then start saying, well, y'all not doing enough. We not doing this. And when understanding, we are operating in a system that isn't even supposed to have over 4,000 colleges and universities here all together. That's right. We actually aren't even designed for 4,000 colleges and universities to be surviving. Yep. Well, you know what? I hate to cut it off, but I just thought of it. We're gonna continue this conversation on IGTV because there's a segment I didn't get to, but we have run out of time for Series 142 HBC Radio at Howard University. So for everybody out there, thank you for listening. Remember to keep up with us at hbcudigest.substack.com. Also, check in with us on all your favorite providers for your podcast. You can listen to us there. And of course, we're about to go into OT on IGTV, but this has been Dodges After Dark. Peace.