Newspaper Page Text
Page 3
the Panther
September 19,1980
Food Stamps
Students No Longer Eligible
BY ANGELA C. ESANNASON
College students not em
ployed for at least 20 hours per
week interested in applying for
food stamps will not be eligible
for stamps beginning October 1,
according to the Department of
Human Resources.
Beginning October 1, college
students who are not working at
least 20 hours per week will not
be eligible for food stamps.
Congress passed a bill last fiscal
year to tighten up the food stamp
program excluding some some
students.
“The thinking behind the bill,-
’’ said Nick Taylor, Assistant com
missioner for public affairs at the
Department of Human
Resources “is an effort by
Congress to try to cut spending
and to keep the budget down.”
Taylor added that the thinking
was that, “If students can go to
Black
Students
Take
Action
In a serious attempt to
revitalize interest in the 107
traditionally black colleges
across the country and to draw
attention to the threat of their
continued existence, hundreds
of thousands of students,
scholars, opinion leaders and
civil rights leaders will stage a
gigantic march and rally in the
nation’s capitol on September
29. The event, the very first of its
kind, is Black College Day '80
which culminates Black College
Month.
"Black College Day '80, the
first celebration of the beauty
and achievements of the
institutions which have
graduated 75 percent of all black
Ph.D.’s, 75 percent of all black
army officers and 80 percent of
all black doctors, will not just talk
about black culture and
excellence, but will demonstrate
them also,” says Tony Brown,
noted black journalist and a
leading advocate for the
coalition to help save black
colleges. _
The march per se will involve,
in competition, the best march
ing bands from the 107
predominantly black colleges.
Three winners will be selected
Black College Day '80 Band. In
addition, a queen and her court,
drawn from the pool of black
college queens, will reign over
the festivities as Miss Black
College Day ’80.
school on Daddy’s money, they
don’t need any food stamps. But
if the students are working their
way through school, then they
would be eligible.”
During the last fiscal year en
ding June 30, some $253 million,
752,000 in food stamps were is
sued in Georgia to 655,000 food
stamp recipients, Taylor said.
Across the nation people ap
plying for food stamps could be
asked to provide more proof of
information on their ap
plications under a new rule
proposed by the Dept, of
Agriculture.
Currently, all persons applying
for food stamps must document
their income, social security
number, and certain medical
and utility expenses. Persons
who are not U.S. citizens must
prove that they are legal aliens to
this country for permanent
residence.
States are also permitted to re
quire all applicants to provide
proof of their liquid assists. In ad
dition, states must require proof
of a number of other eligibility
factors, such as rent or
household composition
whenever the information
provided by an applicant ^ques
tionable.
In addition, the regulation
would put into effect a provision
of food stamps legislation
enacted in May that allows states
to develop a profile of the types
of food stamp cases and
eligibility factors that are most
subject to error. States would
then be able to require
verification of all information
and food stamp cases that fit into
these categories shown to be
“error prone".
“The error prone profile can
be an important management
tool," Assistant Secretary Carol
T. Foreman said. "States should
be able to use it to target their
verification efforts qn the in
formation and cases most likely
to cause errors. This can help to
promote administrative ef
ficiency while reducing errors at
the same time.”
Other changes in the new
regulations would expand the
authority of states to conduct
home visits and contact persons
who may have information
about applicants, require
verification of household iden
tity and residency in every Case,
and permit more verification of
information provided by des
titute households seeking
emergency food stamps.
The proposed rule is the latest
in a series of Departmental and
congressional efforts to tighten
food stamp management. Other
rules put into effect during the
summer required persons dis
qualified for food stamp fraud to
arrange to pay back the value of
the stamps they received before
being allowed to rejoin the
program. These changes were
authorized by legislation
proposed by Congress last
summer.
While the new proposal
should help reduce food stamp
errors, Assistant Secretary
Foreman expressed concern that
the rules could have limited im
pact in those states that lack the
staff to conduct sufficient
verification. "We are worried
that some states do not have
enough staff to check out in
formation on food stamp ap
plications with sufficient
thoroughness,” she said. "No
matterwhatthe verification rules
are, the job cannot be done
properly if states are short on
staff.”
Comments on the proposal
must be received by Oct. 13 and
should be addressed to: Alberta
Frost, Deputy Administrator for
Family Nutrition Program, Food
and Nutrition Service, U.S. Dept,
of Agricultu re, Washington, D.C.
20250.
Quality Is The Key To
M&M Products
As students at Mercer University School of Pharmacy in 1972,
Cornell McB ride and Therman McKenz ie took $500 in savings and
a $500 bank loan and bought selected chemicals, bottles, a 55
gallon steel barrel and a pool cue. They set up. in a basement,
developed their Sta-Sof-Fro hair spray and have been abouttheir
own business ever since.
Last year, their Atlanta - based ethnic health & beauty aids
products firm - M&M Products Company - doubled sales and
jumped from number 99 to number 43 in the Black Enterprise list
of 100 black businesses. They expect to double that this year.
The black owned and operated company now employs about
200 production, administrative and clerical workers, including
several graduate chemists, plus a sales force covering 65 national
markets. And M&M has recently stationed a sales representative in
Lagos, Nigeria.
"But they really have built the business right, with control,
foresight, planning and most of all young wisdom,” said one ad
mirer closely involved with the company. "You know, not being
overly impressed with the wrong things and keeping their eye on
the sparrow, so to speak."
They borrowed about $160,000 in Small Business Administration
guaranteed loans, but other than that, they’ve been reinvesting
the money into the business.
McBride and McKenzie, president and vice president respec
tively, are described as “workaholics who have a finely honed
social conscience.” They point out that in addition to keeping all
company matters closely under control, they are deeply com
mitted to reinvestment into their community through local
charitable, educational and artistic enterprises.
Over the last 8 months they have made substantial contributions
to the NAACP and UNIGEF, a science - mathematics scholarship to
their alma maters, Fort Valley State College and Mercer University
and McBride and McKenzie received many awards. M&M
Products Company is also staging nationwide races to aid Sickle
Cell Foundations during the summer. All proceeds will be the dis
tributed through the Willie Stargell Foundation of Pittsburgh.
Sponsorship of arts and cultural events is a constant in
volvement in their many markets. But recently M&M Products
launched a new venture. In the interest of supporting quality
television programming as a reinvestment into the black com
munity, the company has recently sponsored the news - history
film. "Blacks In America.” This national broadcast, hopefully the
first of a series, also carried with it M&M’s three new commercials
for Sta - Sof - Fro Hair Spray, Style Kit and the new Curl Activator.
Dr. Eli McKenzie, Therman McKenzie’s brother and the firm’s
director of research, development and quality control, will tell
you about the importance of that end of the business. “Quality is
the key and our first objective in manufacturing.” There is a new
beauty salon at M&M where on-going observation is made of con
sumers who use products.
In addition to manufacturing, packaging and marketing its own
“Sta - Sof - Fro” brand of hair and beauty products, M&M makes
packages of private label health and beauty products for other
companies and is seeking to acquire other companies. In late July,
a completely new product line, Sof n’ Free, will be introduced.
This cold wave formula, directed toward the black female con
sumer, has already gained much attention for thequalty of its curl
in its extensive testing period.
“Things are looking very good for us,” said President McBride
last week in an interview sandwiched between a morning business
meeting and an afternoon flight to Canada to shop for new
manufacturing equipment. “We managed to dosomethingsright
in the beginning of this business, and they’re paying off for us right
now.” Why has M&M done so well so quickly?
“We’re very young. Our average age is 32 or something like that.
I think that traditionally, when this kind of thing is started, the
group that is handling it is much older. So, we’re in the rightstage,
and we’re receptive to new things and amenable to change. We
want to learn and we want to accomplish."
Therman McKenzie, vice president, reportedly likes to tell
people he’s from "DC" quickly adding with a laugh that "DC
stands for Dooly County, Ga., not the nation’s capital.” But his
other favorite quip describes one of the company’s marketing
aims - to improve their ID of M&M Products as the makers of Sta -
Sof - Fro. He says "M&M isn’t the candy company - but it's still
chocalate!”
According to Brown, the
number attending the march
and rally is projected to be about
a half million and the chances of
breaking the attendance record
for the March On Washington in
1963 are good. A literal coalition
of every fraternal, sororal,
church, civic, student, business,
social, athletic, labor, political
and educational group in black
America will constitute the
march from the White House to
the Capitol.
The premise of the movement
is to stop those who believe that
black colleges are inferior and
unnecessary. Lorenza P. Butler,
president of the National Pre -
Alumni Council of the UNCF has
formed a committee in the
Atlanta University Center to
coordinate the sending of about
1,000 students to represent the
colleges in the Center at the
Black College Day march and
rally. Each student body
president at the undergraduate
institutions in the Center have
been distributed 250 tickets cos
ting $15 a piece until September
19 and $20 afterwards. Places on
the buses going to Washington
are reserved on a “first come,
first served” basis. The deadline
for all reservations is September
26.