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Daughters Live the Legacy
By Kim Stinger
Family weekend allows our parents
the opportunity to visit Spelman and
get a taste of life on Campus.
There are some mothers, however,
who are very familiar with the sort of
daily lifestyle their daughters are
experiencing, for they led similar lives
when they attended Spelman.
There are many daughters of
Spelmanites within these gates. Many
of their mothers knew their daughters
would attend their beloved alma mater
long before the prospective students
ever realized they would be here.
Consuela Campbell, a junior
sociology major whose mother,
Carlotta, graduated in 1968, says that
Spelman "was all [she] ever heard
about." Spelman is the only college to
which she applied.
Thus far she claims her
experiences have lived up to the
expectations i her mother embedded
within her, although she does call for
"better food. . . air conditioners,
elevators, and other modernizing
renovations."
As a third year legacy student -
her grandmother graduated from
Spelman in 1939 - one speculates as to
whether she will encourage her
daughter to continue the tradition.
When asked about the possibility,
Consuela replied with a smile, "She
doesn’t have a choice."
Elena Temple, a junior English
major, is also the daughter of a
Spelmanite. Her mother, Jacqueline
Temple, C’68, graduated as a Spanish
major.
According to Elena, when her
mother was a student here, "Freshman
dorms were not only for freshmen.
You could live in any dormitory on
campus." Social life was also quite
different then. Elena said that her
mother’s class was not allowed room
visitation. Consuela added that
there was a strictly enforced 10 p.m.
curfew and, while today visitation does
not begin until 6 p.m., males were
ordered to leave campus by 6 p.m. in
1968.
Kelly Debrow, a sophomore math
pre-med major, says that her mother,
LaJoyce Debrow, C’64, could not leave
the campus without at least five or six
companions. She was required to sign
in and out of the dorm so that her
resident assistant would know where
she was at all times.
Convocation in Sister’s Chapel was
an everyday affair, with every student
expected to sit in an assigned seat.
Also, to keep the dorms orderly, each
student was assigned a housekeeping
task for which she was held
responsible.
Despite such rigid policies, Kelly
said her mother encouraged her to
attend Spelman.
"I’ve been to every homecoming
for I don’t know how long!" she
exclaimed.
Like Consuela, Kelly had no desire
to apply elsewhere. Thus far she says
that she is "very pleased" with her
experiences here. And will Kelly
encourage her daughter to attend?
Says the sophomore assuredly, "She
will be here."
Dallas Campbell, C’70 and
Consueia’s aunt, says she has observed
a plethora of changes - "all for the
better" - since her days on campus.
The size and social policies of the
school are quite different from her
experiences at Spelman. She believes
that the advantages of a Spelman
education are evident "even more so
today than in the past."
When asked if she will encourage
her 7-year-old daughter, Shawn, to
attend, she simply laughed and said,
"Have you talked to Shawn Campbell
lately? She’ll be there."
Thank You, Grandmother It’s a Family Affair
i
By Kalia Spears
I remember (as if it were only
yesterday) sitting at my Spelman
College Howard-Herrald dormitory desk
with tears soaking my faded Woodward
Academy t-shirt. I knew my youth
had ended. :I hugged her as tight as
her fragile bones would allow and I let
go because my future said I had no
choice.
She smiled at me, gave me a
reassuring pat on the back, and looked
at me with her soft grey-blue eyes as
if she had confidence in my mission
here. And then she turned away
without glancing back once. Her stiff
firm back gave me strength and I
wiped the tears from my face and
entered a new phase of my life.
By Nissa Walton
With family weekend underway,
my thoughts tend to drift toward the
nature of the relationships I have with
each of my family members.
My family consists of four people.
I guess you could call us the common
nuclear family. My parents have been
together for 22 years and they have my
brother and I to show for it.
As I look into the dynamics of the
relationships I maintain with each of
my family members, I notice that
I wanted to call her five minutes
after the car door slammed and let her
know that I wasn’t ready for adulthood,
that I wasn’t ready for moving on, that
I wasn’t ready for the end of my
youth. I wanted to catch the bus home
to Tuskegee, Alabama and hide-out in
the comfort of her love, her warmth,
and her home-cooked meals, but I
couldn’t let her down. I just couldn’t
let her down. I told myself that
everything would be okay, that these
four years would fly by and that soon
I would be able to share with her the
success that she wanted so badly for
me.
Now, I am a senior and my
time here at Spelman is almost
complete. It’s hard to imagine this
journey coming to an end without the
warm, gentle touch of my grandmother,
Laly Washington. Without her
encouragement, love, and support I
honestly do not believe that I would
have made it through Spelman College,
So Grandma, I thank you. For the
rest of my life, I thank you from the
bottom of my heart for being my
mother, my confidence, my
encouragement, my determination, but,
most importantly, my friend. You are
the most important person in my life.
By LaWanda M. Freeman
Like some of my Spelman Sisters,
my biological brother, F. Eric Freeman,
is "A Man of the House."
Eric and I come from the typical
family where the husband is older than
the wife (my father being four years
older than my mother) and the son is
older than the daughter (Eric being
four years older than me).
When I came to Spelman in the
Fall of 1988, I was given four
Morehouse Brothers at the
Brother/Sister Tea, and another from
my brother dormitory, so by the end of
my freshman year, I had five brothers.
It wasn’t until my junior year that my
biological brother transferred to
Morehouse from Dartmouth College in
Hanover, New Hampshire.
Like most brothers and sisters, Eric
and I loan each other money, keep
mutual secrets from Mom and Dad,
look out for each other and comment
on whom the other is dating.
Unlike most brothers and sisters,
we are four years apart in age but are
both classified as juniors, attend
colleges directly across the street from
each other and have a class together.
Having a big brother at Morehouse
has its advantages. Eric gives me
great advice about relationships because
Daddy’s Girl
although I love each of them
immensely, I have a different
relationship with each member of my
family.
Although each relationship is
special, I feel slightly different about
my father than any other member of
my immediate family.
I guess you could call me a
"daddy’s girl." I am the only daughter
and the oldest which secures me a
special place in my father’s heart.
My father and I have always had
a silent understanding about our love
for each other. Neither of us are
verbal people when it comes to
expressing our feelings, so for us it has
been through our actions that we
express our feelings. In this respect,
we are different from my mother and
my brother who are both very verbal in
their expression of emotions.
My father and I are very much
alike and this allows us to understand
he can identify with the young African-
American brother of today, and I in
return give him advice from the female
perspective.
Eric, a math major, also helped me
last semester when I |was trying to
survive my Calculus class. (Thanks E.!)
Since I am from i Maryland, it’s
always good to have a familiar face
around and I know I can call Eric
when I think of home.
Like all brothers and sisters we
often fight and sometimes Eric really
gets on my nerves. Even though we
are two totally different people, I am
happy to have my big brother here
with me.
Like other students in the AUC
with a brother or sister here, Eric had
an advantage when adjusting to
Morehouse because I had already been
here for a while.
"Having a Spelmanite as a sister
provided a smoother transition into the
Spelman/Morehouse family," he said.
"Also, given her two years on campus,
LaWanda has offered insights into what
actually happens on campus and in
Atlanta."
When I asked Eric about the
disadvantages of having his little sister
at Spelman, he only offered one.
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each other very easily. This eliminates
communication problems which often
occur in family relationships.
I feel that healthy relationships
between fathers and their children are
rare in the African-American
community due to the increasing
number of households being run by the
African-American woman. It is
important to me to maintain the
relationship with my father and not to
take it for granted because neither of
us will be here forever.