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Spelman Spotlight
Page 4
The Sister Syndrome
By Jocelyn Coleman
Editor-in-chief
Every year freshman are faced with
the baffling discovery that Spelman is
not Morehouse’s sister school even
though we are right across the street,
fill the spots of 15 band
instrumentalists, 14 dancers, 3 baton
twirlers, 2 banner carriers, the
cheerleaders, Ms. Maroon and White,
Ms. Senior, Ms. Missouri, Ms. Honors
Club etc...and still have to pay seven
of our precious college-budget dollars
to lay our eyes on the luscious green
of Morehouse’s football field.
"Why’s that?" is the annual
question addressed to the upper
classmen.
Well the answer is simple-we
don’t pay for it.
Spelman College is not
Morehouse’s sister school monetarily or
historically. Bennett College in
Greensboro, N.C. is their sister school
by declaration.
According to Dr. Willa Player,
president of Bennett College from
1926-1955, the brother-sister
relationship grew out of the friendship
between two college presidents, Dr.
David D. Jones of Bennett and Dr.
Benjamin E. Mays of Morehouse, and
a special tie between the choral groups
of the two institutions.
Ms. Ellease Colston, a 1953
graduate of Bennett and presently
director of alumnae affairs, says
Morehouse would come to Bennett
once a year during Thanksgiving time
when the two choirs would perform a
concert together.
Eventually Mays and Jones thought
that it would be nice for the two
schools to develop an official exchange
relationship.
Presently, the activities director at
Bennett sends a check to cover the
football tickets for the number of
Bennett women who attend
Homecoming.
Regardless of who the sister school
is, Spelman women have launched
many protests in the past concerning
the decade-old debate of paying to
attend football and basketball games.
Presently the Spelman argument
harps on the fact that Morehouse
students don’t have to pay to attend our
fashion shows, chill in our snack shop
or play on our ping-pong table.
On the other hand, Morehouse
provides activities that we don’t have:
the MBA for our economics majors,
the band for our musicians and the big
King Chapel productions for our future
Yuzhan Palcys. It is a situation of
give-and-take.
Spelman College is a rock that is
more capable of standing on its own.
Dependency is not the issue. Our
proximity just makes it rather
convenient to associate with each other.
Whenever we get hyped about the
issue, Morehouse just sits back,
chuckles at our concern and looks the
other way.
After all...they don’t beg us to try
out for Miss Buildings and Grounds.
The Unfair Fair
Breakin’ It Down
DID YOU REALIZE WHAT SHE SAID
ABOUT YOU?
By Dr. Akiba Sullivan Harper
Special to the Spotlight
By Maricia Bennekin
On September 28, 1990, the 24th
Annual Career Day Fair was held in
the Robert W. Woodruff Library.
All students were urged to attend,
no matter what the classification or
major. Why? I really don’t know.
The Career Day Fair was definitely
biased.
It catered to the economics,
business, management, math, and
science majors. The career fair was
provided to benefit all of the students
in the AUC, but what were the
English, psychology, sociology, and
music majors to do?
Out of the 160 companies present,
68 were looking for those who had
economics and business management
related majors and 47 were only
interested in the aspiring scientist and
engineer.
And then to top it all off, out of
the 15 companies that were looking at
people who had majors related to the
humanities or social sciences, if you
were not a junior or a senior, you got
a smile, a free pen, a brochure, and
maybe a pat on the back, and was told
to come back and try again next year!
So where does that leave me? Am
I to be overlooked and brushed aside
just because I am a sophomore English
major? Does this mean that my
interests don’t count and I have to
either change my major or minor into
a business related field just to get a
foot in the door? How was I to
benefit from the "Economic and
Science Career Day Fair?" The
exercise for walking to and from
Woodruff and a free pen was not the
benefit I seeked.
As you can see, I was very
disappointed and disgusted after
attending this year’s career fair. It
really was an "unfair fair." In order
to better serve ALL the AUC students,
the fair needs to be re-evaluated.
Science and Economic majors don’t
comprise the entire student population
in the AUC.
Some of us do attend a liberal arts
college, and our majors reflect that.
But don’t get me wrong. I am
very grateful to the companies that
took the time to send representatives to
inform students about themselves. I
just know that there are more than 15
companies out there that are interested
in people like me.
Just think about it. Out of the 60
companies that were present, only 10
percent were interested in students who
had liberal arts majors. Only 10
percent! I just hope that the advisers
and researchers for the next career fair
will take into consideration that there
are more than science and economics
majors in the AUC. There should be
more companies represented so that
every student, "regardless of their
major," can get some chance at a
decent job in the future.
During this, my fourth year of
full-time teaching here at Spelman, I
happily observe the intellectual and
physical development of students I
taught as a freshman. Students delight
me with their plans for graduate
school, careers, and travel. Students’
academic achievements and personal
maturations satisfy those of us who
care for our students and have invested
time and energy in their growth. Thus,
from perspective of concern and
general satisfaction, I offer an
observation about an area of behavior
which might need improvement:
cursing in public.
This year, more than in previous
years, I have passed students outside
the post office, in the Manley Center,
and even in the halls of Giles—cursing
as part of their conversation. Let me
hasten to add that I am not prude;
circumstances sometimes evoke a
poorly chosen word from my mouth.
My distress arises because this increase
in cursing occurs among Spelman
women in a setting where the casual
passerby may overhear. The post
office, the cafeteria, our classroom
buildings, and the pathways of the
campus are used as commonly by
faculty, staff and visitors as by
students. Quite frankly, I suffer
embarrassment when I hear our
students cursing freely in such areas.
Gladly I will add that this
language spews from a minority of
mouths-but they are clearly audible
voices. Consequently, in this article, I
address most of Spelman’s students as
co-conspirators in an important plan to
pressure cursing out of the public
domain. While the myth of the
snobbish and elitist Spelman women
persists outside of campus, those of us
here know the wonderful diversity of
our students. Worth preserving,
however, is an accurate assessment of
the Spelman student as one whose
deportment represents her college, her
faculty, and her peers with dignity.
Let none of us turn a deaf ear,
pretending that the profane language is
acceptable or becoming. Instead,
students, say to your sisters that such
language is not appropriate. Ask for a
more creative expression of the
displeasure or the agitation. Help your
sisters to know that casual passers-by
can only draw wrong conclusions about
Spelman students when cursing flavors
the students’ discussions.
A certain amount of "training" can
lead our tongues away from the habit
of spicing our ordinary dialogues with
curse words. Most of the substitutions
prove more humorous and more lively
than the banal profanities which crowd
contemporary movies an which now
seep into network television. We can
apply capable, intelligent minds to our
communications. We need not
succumb to cursing. We do not
deserve the unfavorable generalizations
about our students which will result
from the casual cursing of a few
untrained mouths.
Dr. Harper is an assistant
professor of English at Spelman.
He wants to do his taxes but he finds
it too difficult to hold a pencil.
Without your help, he may not be able
to do them.
Almost everybody has to file taxes, but not
everyone can do it on their own. Volunteer and
help make someone’s taxes less taxing. Call
1800424-1040.
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