Education

Lane College president delivers State of the College address: ‘I count it all joy’

NEW TRI-STATE DEFENDER — Lane College President Logan Hampton detailed the State of the College while addressing the Lane College National Alumni Association Annual Meeting in Memphis on July 19. Here are excerpts from his talk.

Published

5 years ago

July 29, 2019

Oakland Post

By Logan Hampton

(Lane College President Logan Hampton detailed the State of the College while addressing the Lane College National Alumni Association Annual Meeting in Memphis on July 19. Here are excerpts from his talk.)

…Today, I am delighted to update you on the happenings of Lane College. …Time does not permit a full accounting of blessings this afternoon.

I count it all joy to have received the official letter from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) dated, July 2, 2019.… Lane College is accredited with all the rights and privileges afforded to a SACSCOC regionally accredited institution.

I count it all joy when I think of our women’s basketball team. … During my tenure, these women had never won one tournament game. We never had to think about budget because they would go to the SIAC Basketball Tournament, play a game and return home. This year, they won their first game, then beat the undefeated regular season champions, and went on to win their first SIAC Conference Championship in the history of the College. We have been celebrating since March.

It has just been fun to see our students enjoy success. One graduate started his future at BET – Hollywood. Another will begin the PhD program in neuroscience this fall at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Yes, another is moving on to Syracuse. Our volleyball team was recognized for the highest GPA among other SIAC member institutions. They will spike the ball in your face and look better than you.

Our 2019 Miss Lane, Shannel DeFoe, is a member of the volleyball team, competed in the state Miss Tennessee Volunteer Scholarship Pageant, won talent and made the top 15, the first in the history of Lane College since 1985. The baseball and softball teams each won 20 plus games and competed well in their tournaments. Additionally, the baseball team had four players to make SIAC All-Conference, yes, from Lane, SIAC All-Conference in baseball.

I count it all joy when I consider that the College finally completed and submitted its proposal to establish a teacher preparation program to the State of Tennessee. My colleagues have done the work, so we pray now that the proposal finds favor with the Tennessee Department of Education and is approved.

Frankie Grice (right) had plenty of support as she received an award for “your tireless hard work and dedication to The Lane College Memphis Alumni Chapter.” Photo: Tyrone P. Easley)

I count it all joy when I think of the $649,801 S-STEM National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to our science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty this year. The grant provides scholarships to science, STEM majors. We want to scholarship the next generation of high achieving STEM scholars to earn their degree. Tell your seniors, apply now, it’s not too late.

A couple of weeks back, the College received notification that the Lane College Chemistry Department has been awarded a grant in the amount of $398,786 by NSF Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP).

I count it all joy when I think of the community garden or urban farm that we are currently developing on our 2.5 acres lot on Lane Avenue. We will soon have sweet potatoes, herbs, flowers growing in East Jackson as we grow scholars, grow our community and grow hope.

This year, we piloted several institutional innovations. We created the Student Textbook Exchange Program (STEP), a collaboration of academic affairs, student affairs and auxiliary services that provided each student their course materials. We reasoned that we could provide the materials at a more affordable price than our students could purchase on the Internet. We observed that students who participated in STEP had a higher average GPA compared to those who did not.

Also, we adjusted our fall calendar to end the semester prior to the Thanksgiving holiday. Since I arrived, I observed how difficult it is for our students to go home for a week at Thanksgiving and then return to campus for a week of finals. So, we ended the semester early and then hosted a Decembermester.

I count it all joy that Dr. Willie Mae Willett brought CVS to the College to explore a partnership to establish internship and CVS training center on campus.

Lane’s slogan, The Power of Potential®, not only describes our students; it also describes how we view current and future students. While it may be all that some see, an underfunded and underprepared student who hails from underserved and under-resourced schools and communities, at Lane College, we see grit, resiliency, hopefulness, gifts, talent and the power of potential. We employ intrusive, high-touch policies, practices, and processes to cultivate and develop each student’s potential. We do it more affordably than our sister institutions. …

Dr. Anna Cooke described our founder, Bishop Lane, with these words, “Regarded by some as a crank on the subject of education, by others as a beggar, he was often rejected but continued to pray and work for the educational uplift of the young people of his race” (Lane College: It’s Heritage and Outreach 1882-1982, p. 18).

Some might consider it an insult to be called cranky and a beggar. But after, these five years as president, I have confirmed the Ecclesiastical writing, to everything there is a season, a time to be cranky and a time to beg.

When it comes to defending the educational mission of Lane College, I find it necessary sometimes to be cranky. One day, a fella stopped by my office and asked me, more or less, if we had too many black boys with all their testosterone. I got a little cranky.

I told him, “Pick up your newspaper and read it some time. Turn the nightly news on and watch it some time. You will find sufficient evidence that we need to provide all of the educational opportunities for African-American males that we possibly can.”

That’s why I’m happy to be here today representing the Lord and Lane College. At Lane, 52 percent of the student body is male with 48 percent female. I celebrate the number of African American males that we enroll.

For too long, our black boys have been marginalized and stigmatized and demonized and ostracized and denigrated. The media goes out of its way to portray them as scary thugs.

So I say bring us your black boys with all their testosterone because we ain’t scared. We are set to make leaders who know the Lord, their lesson, and life purpose. Bring us your testosterone because we are set to help them be good daddies and strong daddies, active and engaged in the lives of their children. Bring us your testosterone because we are set to make them scholars and intellectuals and preachers and doctors and lawyers. Bring us your testosterone. We are ready make men out of boys….

In equipping, educating and empowering our graduates, we make them ready to be lifelong learners, leaders and servants. The graduate leaves ready to compete in the marketplace, compete in the workforce and make their companies, communities and our country stronger.

Again, Lane College National Alumni, I ask you for the following: Pray for Fair Lane. Call us by name. Pray for me, a broken, frail leader…

Say good things about us… In particular, please write your United States congressional representatives and advocate for Lane by asking your senator and representatives to vote for legislation that supports the HBCU historic preservation, full funding of Title III programs, increase in Pell grants…

Send us your students. While our national recruiting is strong, we always have room for one more exceptional scholar.

Send us your gifts. Financial gifts sustain the College. We need you to make your best gift to the College today. The College has great deferred maintenance needs to sustain the historic buildings and unfortunately the new buildings as well. … Also, I remind you that 90 percent of our students are Pell eligible and need your help to make the institution affordable. … Put the College in your will.

Here is my shout today: We, Lane College, that is, sit on the highest point, the highest elevation, in Jackson-Madison County. Jesus spoke about us in the Bible. Read the Lane College translation of the Bible. Jesus said, ““You are the light of the world (Jackson-Madison County). A city (college) that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Let your light so shine before men (Jackson-Madison County, State of Tennessee), that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14,16)

This article originally appeared in the New Tri-State Defender

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Activism

LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST

Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Published

5 days ago

November 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?

Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.

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Art

Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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California Black Media

On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.

If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.

California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.

“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.

Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.

“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.

Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.

“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”

A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.