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Grant at a Glance The following quotes were taken from messages delivered to graduates in the past. These quotes are still very relevant today to the graduates of 1985. I hope that you find them very meaningful and inspiring. May they add to your knowledge and experience as you embark on a new journey beyond the gates of Spelman College. “Why were you born? You were born to search for ex cellence. Fourteen or fifteen years of your life young brother and sister, you have already spent, and just this year you are finding out that life is a search for excellence. If life is a search for excellence, what is this excellence and why must we search for it? According to the dictionary, to achieve excellence is to have arrived at the best way of doing something, and to excell at something means the best way. Let me ask you something: What was George Washington and his friends looking for when they revolted against the King of England? They were dissatisfied, they were looking for excellence, they were trying to set up a govern ment which they felt would be best, for their people. Why was Columbus willing to sail 9,000 miles across an ocean that was unfamiliarto Europeans when he could have gone east by sailing east as we had taught them to do. He wasn't satisfied. He was looking for a better way. He was looking for excellence you could say. Why did Lowell, Grimson, Scherra, White and other astronauts make flights into outer space to land on the moon? They were in search of excellence. I'm not asking you to get involved in light stuff, I’m asking you today to excel in one thing and that is at being yourself because you were the one that made it, you were one in a million. I want you to find the best way possible of being yourself. Being yourself? that should be easy to do: I tell you that if you could be yourself, you could be whatever anyone else is doing and better.” To the Graduates - 1984. A Search for Excellence "Excel at being yourself’’ by Sonia Sanchez (this excerpt was taken from her message which appeared in U M OJ A newsmagazine, 1984.) "What has been available to you here and what you take away is really not available in very many places... a sense of belong ing, a sense of mission, and, particularly, an intimacy with your history and your culture. This knowledge comes hard, very hard, to many of us. This knowledge comes hard to many people on the globe. This knowledge of who you are ... what you know of value, and what there is to protect. You have been educated by your people and they have given it to you. You are a community of black women. There is nothing like it in the world. There is nothing like it in the world. There is nothing as magical. There is nothing as potentially powerful. There is nothing so fierce ... nothing so nurturing as a com munity of black women who know who they are. There is another education that you have received here, in addition to the academic one. It is an education that is still rare in this country. You have learned what you learned, and felt what you have felt, and done what you have done in the company of other black women. Many of your sisters are elsewhere. I go there. I see them ... all over ... too many of them are miserable. Too many of them I see struggle and fight daily, hourly, for the simplest dignity... for the most minor recognition. The Spelman community is simply a life-support system. It is a network of strength that is so complete, it is practically the last place where the word sister is a real and meaningful word.” Toni Morrison, Author Commencement May, 1978 What Morrison and Sanchez has conveyed is that what we have learned behind the gates of Spelman College, we must carry beyond in our search for ex cellence. We have just com pleted one such search. Now we will embark on another. In this new search, as we have or should have done in our past search, we must excel in being ourselves. Only then will we be able to effectively use what we have learned. Editor-in-Chief News Editors Carolyn Grant Jasmine Williams Debbie Marable Sports Editor Marie Roberts Feature Editor Wanda Yancey Literary Editor Carol Lawrence Political Editor Sydney Perkins Health Editor Angela Hubbard Layout Editor Natalie Heard Art Editor Debra Johnson Circulation Manager Triphenya Zachery Advisor Kimberly McElroy Reporters Valerie K. Bright Photo Editor Dawn M. Lewis Jennifer Satterfield Photographers Associate Editor Kathleen Tait Lynette Glover Joanna Griffith The Spelman Spotlight is a bi-monthly publication produced by and for the students of Spelman College. The Spotlight office is located in the Manley College Center, lower concourse, of Spelman College. Mail should be addressed to Box 1239, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia 30314. Telephone number is 525-1743. Along the Color Line: College Education: For The Rich Only? Perhaps the best index of social inequality is the accessibility of higher education to people of color in the United States. After his reelection, Presi dent Reagan proposed the elimination of student loans from families earning above $32,500 per year, and an annual ceiling of $4,000 for federal loans to all eligible students. This effort is yet another indication of how far we have declined from the popular consensus of two decades ago concerning the necessity of providing access to higher education to all. Desegregation campaigns of the 1960s forced white public and private academic institutions to permit the enrollment of Black students for the first time. The number of Black faculty, administrators and students also increased dramatically at white schools in the North and West. Such gains were not simply the product of the demise of Jim Crow, but occurred due to expanded federal financial loans to low and moderate income students. Philanthropic agen cies, pressured by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, belatedly provided millions of dollars in grants and scholarships to Black students. Since the late 1970s, with the national retreat from the “Se cond Reconstruction,” the pressure to accelerate Black educational opportunities was retarded, and during Reagan’s tenure the tide has been revers ed. The percentage fo Black high school seniors going directly into four year colleges has fallen sharply. The latest trend on campuses, the shocking increases in tuition fees, will also have a direct impact on minority education. At a time when inflation has cooled off for several years, college costs continue to climb. The Ivy League schools lead the way. Princeton University’s overall costs for tuition, room and board will be $14,940 next fall; Yale University, $15,020; Brown University, $14,765; Dart mouth College, $14,860. Other elite, private institutions are charging roughly the same fees, if not more. This year’s tuition and fees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cost a staggering $16,130. Wesleyan University in Connecticut plans to increase student charges next year by 8.5 percent, to $14,440; Stanford University is hiking fees 7.5 percent, to $14,893; St. Lawrence students will face costs of $15,376, an increase of 7 percent. Higher tuition costs are less severe for state supported institutions, but nevertheless remain quite steep. The Univer sity of Connecticut at Storrs, for example, plans to increase in state students, faculty and staff. If such measures aren't taken, the percentage of Black and Latino students who complete four year programs at universities will fall sharply before the 1990s. A college education should not be for the rich alone. Dr. Manning Marable teaches political sociology at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York. "Along the Color Line” appears in over 140 newspapers inter nationally.