FEATURES

Susan Hutson, New Orleans’ New Independent Police Monitor
by Lovell Beaulieu

Up with DOJ
by Lovell Beaulieu

Art, Glorious Art
by Dr. Sarah Hollis

SUNO under siege
by Lovell Beaulieu

Broken Promises
By Lolis Eric Elie

Amour De Cafe
by Fallon Jai

Columns & Departments

Publisher's Notes
Month in Review
Our Town
Blackonomics

SUNO under siege

The fate of Southern University in New Orleans and the debate over its future involving SUNO, the state of Louisiana and its Board of Regents may come down to the irresistible force meeting the immovable objects.

Depending on the point of view, SUNO more than likely wears the hat of the force, constantly having to face the object of obstruction, in this case, the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal and House Speaker Jim Tucker. Both are posing the greatest resistance to SUNO while doing all they can to put it out of existence.

According to Sara Hollis, director of the master's program in museum studies at SUNO, the issue comes down to several key factors, most notably, Jindal’s desire to make more cuts in higher education by limiting the number of four-year institutions. Hollis disagrees with Jindal’s assertion that cost-savings would result from a smaller or non-existent SUNO, since SUNO is part of the Southern University System, which has campuses in other parts of the state but of which SUNO holds a unique spot.

The biggest rap against SUNO - primarily coming from the Jindal administration and augmented by the daily newspaper’s only black editorial columnist - is that the length of time it takes SUNO’s students to graduate coupled with lower test scores places SUNO in an even more precarious position.

They argue that even with SUNO’s plans to raise its academic standards by mandating incoming students score a 20 on the ACT, the school needs to either be merged with nearby University of New Orleans, converted into two-year junior college or, inline with the prevailing sentiment of some of the city’w power brokers, razed and turned into green space.

They also say that SUNO graduates who may take six years to graduate would be better served elsewhere.

“I don’t care if it takes somebody 10 years to graduate,” Hollis said. “When they walk across that stage, they have a degree.”

Hollis is a longtime defender of the SUNO brand, having been at the school for some 30 plus years.She came out of retirement to be a part of the school’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of Hurricane Katrina. She believes much of the resistance toward SUNO, when it doesn’t involve race, is based on the fact that SUNO’s enrollment numbers are nearing pre-Katrina levels and are much better than UNO’s, which has had to grapple with laying off professors and staff while cutting back on athletics, including dropping down from NCAA Division 1 to Division III.

“Enrollment is o ever 3,000,” she said. “We’re the fastest growing institution in Louisiana.”

Despite that, the Board of Regents cancelled 19 of SUNO’s programs, and has been determined to gut programs such as criminal justice and museum studies.

“Imagine New Orleans without a master’s in criminal justice,” she said.

One of the things working against SUNO - and something rarely reported in the local press - is SUNO doesn’t get credit for students who transfer into the school.

“A lot of our students do (transfer into SUNO)….55 percent of our students are over 25,” Hollis stated, adding that many of those non-traditional students have children, and some are caring for elderly parents.”

Conversely, much of LSU’s enrollment comes to the school straight out of high school.

“We’re being judged by rules that are not fair to our situation,” Hollis maintains. “We’re still teaching in trailers.

Interestingly, and likely to the chagrin of Jindal, Tucker and others, President Obama’s administration has seen fit to direct $16 million toward the school’s library and another $32 million toward tearing down and rebuilding others. SUNO’s biggest adversaries, it turns out, are its own state’s elected officials.

“The library wasn’t gutted until last summer,” Hollis said. “It’s unbelievable that a university in the United States doesn’t have a library. I think it’s racism. I think it’s classism. Now they even have rules where we’re not allowed to have remedial classes.”

Hollis is not alone in her assessment of what’s taking place. George Amadee, president of the Faculty Senate at SUNO, calls the attempt to hurt SUNO a “slow death” that he is prepared to fight.

“The faculty senate gave me the charge at looking at filing some civil rights complaint, either Title IV or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” Amadee said.

By requiring SUNO to go into selective admissions by 2010, Amadee said the result would be a weaker institution, a situation that is “too severe” for an institution that hasn’t had much its infrastructure rebut post-Katrina.

“Our whole feeder system has been disrupted,” Amadee reminds citizens, citing the fact that the New Orleans Public Schools lost many of its students and teachers as a result of the hurricane and the state takeover of schools through the Recovery School District.

Much like Hollis, Amadee believes race pays a significant role in what’s happening in Louisiana higher education as it relates to SUNO.

“If you look at the history of the South, the history of Louisiana, it was never the intent of Louisiana to educate African-Americans,” he said. that is why the federal government has embarked on a three-state federal complaint against Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to right wrongs of the past.

Amadee believes there is a fiscal crisis in Louisiana, and that the normal reaction would be to have all schools take a cut instead of just targeting SUNO.

Amadee also agreed with Hollis’ take on the typical SUNO student.

“We have a larger percentage of nontraditional students than any school in the state,” he said. “The vast majority of students who enroll at SUNO are not first-time freshmen.”

Whereas the previous metric - or standard - to gage SUNO’s success was enrollment, Amadee said that has been changed to include things such as graduation rates.

“The state of Louisiana has held back the money - and not to bring SUNO back. Now they’re looking retroactively at graduation rates.”

As for a merger, Amadee is blunt.

“We know the history of mergers,” he said. The merger of the two universities would not work, and would result in the students SUNO serves to “go out of state.”you

In the end, SUNO administrators and faculty continue to wage a war against a state government that is in a cut-at-all-cost mode and not serve the state’s most vulnerable population.

What’s been lost on the public, Hollis maintains, amid all the talk of institutional mergers is what would happen to SUNO’s core population of the school is no longer around as it has been for the past 50 years.

“It’s heartbreaking to see people trying to take us apart,” said Hollis, a former Peace Corp volunteer who spent time in Nigeria before settling in New Orleans.

“If SUNO is not here, where are they going to go?” Hollis asked. “It wouldn’t be a merging. It would be a submerging. They’d want to make it green space. I think it’s a real disservice. For 50 years we’ve been taking students no one else wanted.”