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A Song For Iris
Continued from page 1
challenge. You can feel her
excitement when she talks
about theater. She really gets
in to it. In “Seagull” she will be
playing the part of Nina. She
says that while the character
of Dolly was a reflection of
herself in many ways, a very
gregarious character, Nina is
entirely different. Nina is a
warm, soft spoken girl. Ms. Lit
tle is happy about the
revelation of the fact that not
being typecasted for this role is
evidence of her versatility.
“Seagull” will open Nov. 16.
Ms. Little plans to teach and
direct on the college level. She
wants to use the next five years
after graduation to enjoy life,
to enjoy herself. “I want to
know it all,” she says,
“expei^nce it all, all kinds of
theater.”
Ms. Little likes turquoise
and silver jewellry. Her
earrings are silver. Her rings
are both turquoise and silver.
Her black print blouse has
silver lines interspersed with
red flowers on it. A silver belt
holds up her jeans.
“Yea, I like silver,” she ad
mits, smiling.
What do Dr. and Mrs. George
Little think of their daughter’s
queenship? “Naturally my
parents were very pleased and
very proud,” she said. She
laughed. Because she was and
is the only girl-child, “I had a
lot of tom-boy traits in me. I
think that my mother’s sole ef
fort in raising me was to make
a lady out of me.”
Her older brother, George
Little, a graduate of
Morehouse, will be flying to
Atlanta from the University of
Texas to be at his sister’s
Coronation. “He said, ‘I
wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
Ms. Little said with an obvious
look of happiness. Ms. Little’s
second brother is five years
younger than she. “He just
wants to get down here to
Spelman to see the ladies,” Ms.
Little said with a smile.
Who actually supported this
lady with the throaty laugh?
Who really wanted her to
become Ms. Maroon and
White? “I had the sole support
of the Morehouse Glee Club.
And those brothers represent
all the brothers at Morehouse
College. You’ve got your fiats,
your bookworms, your
sportsmen, your everybody.”
If a member of Morehouse is
not represented by the glee
club, and if he were there the
night of the contest, he was
probably won over by Ms. Lit
tle’s winning words, “I’m a
lady of quality and Morehouse
deserves quality. I will give
you quality all year round.”
Page 7 - Spelman Spotlight
Ms. Little was Ms. Kappa Alpha Psi for 1976-1977.
Continued from page 1
might discuss after I have
finished.
I am now beginning my
sophomore year at Spelman
and as I look back to my
freshman year I am sure that I
was much like many of our
freshmen today, that is, a bit
bewildered, a little confused
and a little frightened, but also
excited and stimulated by the
prospect of meeting new
people, making new friends,
and facing the new challenge
of learning and being exposed
to ideas that challenged my
own preconceived notions of
how things should be. Such
challenges made my first year
one of growth and change as I
listened and sought to learn as
much about this place called
Spelman as I could. I ended my
first year with great respect
and affection for Spelman and
its many facets. I came to ad
mire the able faculty we have
and the stimulating students
and the very dedicated staff.
But I also ended my first year
with a sense of unease, as I am
sure others did, particularly on
the faculty and in the ad
ministration.
Why my own sense of
unease? It was brought on in
part by a student forum that
was held in two parts on our
campus. My wife and I
attended and we listened very
closely to what students were
telling all of us as faculty
members and administrators
about their set of disap
pointments at Spelman. I left
the forum wondering what we
must do. Is our educational life
not stimulating? Are we not
doing things in our student
programs, our dormitories, our
dining room, in the various
clubs we have on campus that
are trying to be responsive to
student needs and demands?
Is the physical plant really as
bad as all that? Is our health
delivery service not what it
should be? The forum left me
with mixed feelings and the
impression that Jthere was a
cacophony and no real consen-
Stewart’s Opening Convocation Speech
sus about where we were and
what we needed to do. On the
one hand, I heard some
students saying you are giving
us too much work, or the work
is not relevant. On the other
hand, I hear students saying
you are not giving us enough
work, our minds are not being
challenged, and we are worried
about whether or not the
education we are receiving at
Spelman College will prepare
us for that competitive en
vironment into which we must
go. I think the forum was very
timely, because coming
towards the end of my first
year, as I had begun to develop
a sense of the institution, if you
will, it made me realize that
there was an awful lot I jhst
didn’t know, and that, whereas
as a faculty member and ad
ministrator I spent time with
colleagues talking about
students, I haven’t spent as
much time talking with
students as I should have.
The second reason for my
sense of unease as I finished
my freshman year was the
realization that the financial
situation of Spelman College
was not a good one. In fact, as I
looked down the path not very
far, I could envisage a worsen
ing financial situation that
indeed might threaten the very
existence of our beloved
college. So, I spent a summer of
talking with others and thin
king about what we should do.
Frankly, I found that our
problems at Spelman are not a
great deal different form those
at many private institutions of
higher education and
particularly of historically
black institutions. The whole
sector of private higher
education is in trouble because
of insufficient public support,
rising costs, insufficient en
dowment, and inability to
raise our own prices much
more before pricing ourselves
right out of the market,
thereby not being able to at
tract students. At the same
time, justified demands for in
creasing salaries that need to
keep pace with spiraling in
flation, increasing costs of
energy, increasing costs of
maintaining a very expensive
physical plant, have all con
tributed to my entering my
sophomore year with a deep
preoccupation with issues of
institutional maintenance and
enhancement as well as a con
viction that we can no longer
go about business as usual at
Spelman. It must be time for a
new ball game. While we are
currently sound physically
(and I wish to stress that
Spelman is not on the brink of
bankruptcy), we do anticiapte
a significant decrease in out
side funding next year. If this
takes place, we will suffer a
major deficit in our budget—-a
budget that, happily, is now
balanced. We need to an
ticipate that, and so while we
are physically sound curren
tly, unless we significantly cut
costs or increase revenue this
year and the years
immediately ahead, we will
find our situation precarious
indeed.
We face this interrelated set
of problems at a time when we
are moving to strengthen the
educational quality of this
institution while we still have
a faculty-student ratio of 1 to
13, when we have excellent
programs that have been
developed and are being
fielded in the college, at a time
when I think morale is high,
because we have a sense that
even though we are still
searching, we do know who we
are and what we want to
become, building on what we
are. We have confidence that
we can achieve even greater
heights, but how sobering
when we think about the finan
cial situation in which we find
ourselves. And, frankly, how
unfair that, having been on a
growth curve, largely due to
circumstances beyond our con
trol, we find ourselves facing a
possible period of contraction
or decline. All efforts are now
being made to follow a dual
strategy of, on the one hand,
increasing our income or
revenue while, on the other,
looking to see how we can
tighten our belts.
Now let me tell you a bit
about the two processes
through which we are going.
On the development side, we
are working very hard to have
a well coordinated and active
development effort. We have
increased the size of our
development staff. I think we
have a very good team that is
beginning to reach out on
Spelman’s behalf and aggres
sively look for ways to enhance
our external image as well aa
to identify possible sources of
funds that we might have. The
development office, however,
is only as good as we as a
faculty and students are in
creating that sense of
excitement and new ideas
about the educational
enterprise which can be taken
by me and others (and I hope
there will be students involved
in this process) to the external
world to find the kind of fun
ding that we need. A great deal
of energy is therefore being put
into the development effort
and it will increase.
The second part of the
strategy is to begin a
systematic, intensive study of
the principal factors that make
up the financial structure of
Continued on page 8
illmerican Collegiate iPoets &ntf)ologp
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is sponsoring a
Rational College $oetrp Contest
Foil Concours 1977.
open to alt college and university students desiring to hove their poetry
anthologized. CASH PRIZES will go to the top five poems:
$100
$50
$25
$10 F ° u,,h
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
$10
AWARDS of free printing for ALL accepted manuscripts in our popular,
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TOETS Deadline: October 25
CONTEST RULES AND RESTRICTIONS:
1. Any student is eligible to submit his verse.
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3. All entries must be typed, double-spaced, on one side of the page only.
Each poem must be on a separate sheet and must bear, in the upper left-
hand corner, the NAME ond ADDRESS of the student as well as the
COLLEGE attended.
4. There are no restrictions on form or theme. Length of poems up
to fourteen lines. Each poem must have a separate title.
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5. The judges' decision will be final. No info, by phone!
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7. There is an initial one dollar registration fee for the first entry and a
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8. All entries must be ppstmarked not later than the above deadline and
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4747 Fountain Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029