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Department of Education Hosts Teach Campaign
Jordon Nesmith
Staff Writer
jnesmith 17 @ gmaii .com
M orehouse College
housed the Teach
Campaign Town Hall Meet
ing that took place Jan. 31 in
the Ray Charles Performing
Arts Center.
Chauncey Smith, a senior
Morehouse student, opened
the event with a video re
cording of President Barack
Obama, who applauded Sec
retary of Education Arne
Duncan’s efforts to foster a
more diverse future of edu
cators. Obama praised More
house for being at the fore
front of such an important
movement. The president
echoed his State of the Union
address stating that we are a
nation that exceeds expecta
tions and the same should go
for our education.
Morehouse College Presi
dent Dr. Robert Franklin ’75
introduced the panel which
consisted of: Shelton “Spike”
Lee ’79, Congressman John
Lewis, MSNBC’s Jeff John
son, Christopher Watson,
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (center) hosts a town hall meeting at Morehouse to call for more male
teachers. Other panelists for the forum included Spike Lee 79 and Jeff Johnson.
Derrick Dalton and Secretary
of Education Arne Duncan.
Duncan alerted the audience
to some “stark and tough” facts.
Although there are large num
bers of Black children in U.S.
schools, less than 2 percent of
teachers in the workforce are
Black males. However, due
to the approaching retirement
age of the “baby boomer” gen
eration, over a million teachers
will be leaving the classrooms
within a matter of years.
In spite of layoffs, it is es
sential to attract great teachers
and principals to leave a legacy
for current and future genera
tions. Duncan also relayed his
feelings that for far too long
teachers have been underpaid
2 and underval-
O
«| ued, but those
s times are com-
o ing to an end.
o
Proposed re
ts visions of the
t 2002 No Child
| Left Behind
s Act includes
making the act
more punitive,
prescriptive
and raising the
standards and
increasing re
wards.
Lee ‘79 re
counted his
upbringing in
an environ
ment greatly
focused on ed
ucation. Lee,
a third gen
eration “Spel-
house” gradu
ate, believes
that Black
men need to see more than just
the great athletes, rappers and
drug dealers and that teachers
are a fundamental building
block of our society.
“It’s not all about the spot
light,” Lee said.
Watson, a science teacher
at Carver Early College High
School in Atlanta, revealed that
the Teach for America program
was a “driving force” for him
to become a teacher. Dalton,
a principal at Mundy’s Mill
Middle School and the product
of a factory worker and a felon,
accredited his success to being
moved into advanced courses
in grade school that changed
his perception. According to
Dalton, no one in the room
would be where they are with
out the effort of teachers.
Johnson redirected atten
tion to the site 5by2015.org,
a website that will soon help
champion the mission of in
creasing the number of Black
school teachers to 5 percent
by the year 2015.
Duncan stirred a great deal
of excitement for the cause
of increasing the numbers of
Black male educators. “We
have to make sure the teach
ers and principals reflect the
great deal of diversity of the
country,” Duncan said. “Men
of Morehouse should be a
huge part of the solution.”
Morehouse Students Named
Business Plan Finalists
Kevin Mallory
Campus News Editor
kmftllory@tigermail,fflore=
house,edit
T he field of 36 contestants
has been whittled down
to five for the Morehouse
Business Plan Competition
that will take place during the
Innovation Expo on Feb. 9
and 10. Out of the five final
ists, four represent the AUC
(three from Morehouse and
one from Clark Atlanta).
The teams of Prescella
Monger and Stephen John
son (CAU), Phillip Wiggins
and Lee Young (Morehouse),
Malcolm Parrish (More
house), Alicia Glenn (Howard
University) and Alex Rivera
(Mount Saint Mary College)
will present their ideas at the
competition.
The theme of the competi
tion is “There’s an App for
That,” where students will
present the application ideas
they have for mobile phones.
“The business plan com
petition is a way to increase
awareness in the minority
community in terms of in
creasing the whole concept of
the entrepreneurial skill set,”
Tiffany Bussey, the director
of the Morehouse College En
trepreneurship Center, said.
“It (entrepreneurship)
doesn’t mean just starting a
business, it means having a
skill set to see opportunity
wherever it is. You don’t
have to be a business owner
in order to be an entrepreneur.
That’s the Morehouse defini
tion,” Bussey said.
This year’s competition
theme was a no brainer for
Bussey when she found out
how prevalent apps are with
today’s youth.
“When it came up in the
meeting, they had to tell me
this is the hottest thing with
young people, and that is all
I needed to hear,” Bussey
said. “Everyone has a mobile
device and everyone is using
apps.”
In fact, Wiggins and Young
saw an opportunity when they
came to a realization about
their app. “We brainstormed
and we realized that the app
we developed meets a need
that is not currently being
met. The one app that does
what our app does has not
been successful at all,” Wig
gins said.
For Glenn, entering the
competition was a chance
to get into a field where few
black people have attempted
to enter.
“I attended an event by the
Congressional Black Caucus,
and they were talking about
developing apps and how
black people were not re
ally in the field of developing
apps,” Glenn said.
Parrish has created an app
for education; he hopes his>
application serves as a rem
edy for the difficulties facing
his hometown.
“I’m from Detroit, where
the public school system is
very bad and still struggling,”
Parrish said. “I’ve always
wanted to do something about
education, so that is where it
stems from.”
While there is no doubt that
black people have the talent,
ideas, and drive to succeed,
inside track
Emotions Run High at SGA
Senate Meeting
Lance Dixon
Associate News Editor
IdixcMilO 12# gmaii .-com
T he 81st session of the
SGA Senate met Tuesday
to discuss various matters of
business. The business in
cluded topics such as appro
priations for the Morehouse
Film Association and a pro
posal from senior Jacques
Pape for an upcoming Spring
Break trip to Haiti. The most
notable piece of business was
discourse and debate over the
resolution to a potential bill
that would restructure the
SGA.
This bill, affectionately
known as the “Travis bill”
named for SGA President
Travis Randle, would intro
duce six new secretaries (in
cluding the Treasurer) to the
SGA Executive Board who
would serve as liaisons to the
offices of the six vice presi
dents who serve with Presi
dent Franklin. Voting for the
bill will not take place until
two weeks after Tuesday’s
meeting. The resolution to the
bill, which was received with
a mixed reaction, was pre
sented by Senators M. Louis
Deas II and Ocoszio Jackson.
Vice President and Presi
dent of the Senate, Tyler Bell,
relinquished his position as
chair over the debate of the
resolution so he could voice
his opinion. Bell drew issue
with a phrase in the resolution
that would resolve that the
SGA’s structure is currently
“inadequate and inefficient.”
Bell considered the phrase “a
slap in the face” to President
Pro-Tempore Eric Bennett
and those who worked to cre
ate the Senate scholarship for
students.
The debate continued as
other senators seemed to
echo the sentiments of Bell
and considered the wording
of that particular item to be
faulty and called the necessity
of “radical change” into ques
tion. Senator Deas continued
to debate the affirmative for
the resolution by clarifying
the difference between the
SGA and its structure.
“The resolution states that
the SGA’s structure is inad
equate and inefficient not the
SGA itself,” Deas said.
When a motion was made
to vote to amend those phras
es, the motion was rejected
after drawing the ire of some
senators.
Many senators also seemed
to see the change as unneces
sary and instead argued that
leaders needed to be called
into question as opposed to
being removed completely.
President Randle quoted
Abraham Lincoln when
he stated “a house divided
against itself cannot stand”
and asserted that greater com
munication would come from
these new secretarial posi
tions.
“As a president there is
no one I can turn to when it
comes to an issue under one
of the six offices of the col
lege,” Randle said.
Emotions would continue
to run high. Randle spoke
one final time before the vote
to stress to the senators the
importance of admitting the
flaws of the SGA in order to
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