Is It Just a Campaign `COMMITMENT'?

Black Issues in Higher Education, June 22, 2000 by Lydia Lum

Despite Texas' election-year settlement with the Office of Civil Rights, future HBCU funding levels remain uncertain

AUSTIN, Texas -- Funny what a political election can do for higher education. Some schools in key communities get greater state funding. Others get varied gifts that can come in the form of sizable grants, new athletic stadiums or assorted other forms.

But the long-overdue settlement of an almost 30-year desegregation case against this state has some observers wondering aloud if Gov. George W. Bush isn't using the very serious discrepancies between Texas' Black and White institutions to boost his presidential campaign.

Signed and sealed late last month, officials from Texas and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights finally entered into a pact to resolve inadequacies in the state's two historically Black colleges -- Texas Southern and Prairie View A&M universities -- and in the access that students of color have to the traditionally White institutions here.

"On one level, I'm shocked, but on another level, I'm not," says Dr. M. Christopher Brown, professor of higher education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who published his research about college desegregation in the Southern and border states in the 1999 book, The Quest to Define Collegiate Desegregation. "I'm shocked that Texas would enter into an agreement, because they have been so hands-off on compliance issues for so long. But it is an election year."

Known as the Texas Commitment, the accord "represents the latest initiative by the state to enhance and expand opportunities for minority participation and success in Texas' higher education system," reads a statement from Bush executive assistant Clay Johnson. "It provides an effective and thorough process that will enable the state to address the concerns raised by OCR regarding the state's obligations. In particular, this agreement provides a blueprint for achieving academic excellence" at Texas Southern and Prairie View.

"I want all Texans to have an opportunity to enjoy the benefits of our state's higher education system," said a written statement from Bush, who spoke at Prairie View's commencement last month. "Strengthening Prairie View and Texas Southern, along with our state's other public universities, is important to making sure every Texan has access to a quality, affordable education."

But after the dust settles in this Lone Star state, when all the photo ops and the election-year politicking subside, many observers wonder how much the agreement forces Texas officials to really improve the lot of Texas' neediest students, its most resource-strapped colleges and the very future of the economy of the state.

"I don't trust this document," Brown says. "This is a very friendly document toward Texas. I'm just guardedly hoping that it's not too friendly."

The Covenant

Until last month, Texas, which has been operating under several state-approved desegregation plans, was one of the three states not in compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination in federally subsidized schools. Virginia and Maryland are still in noncompliance, and while Texas has settled, federal officials are continuing to monitor efforts to eliminate dual systems of higher education.

The settlement calls for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, a regulatory agency that oversees state-supported universities and community colleges, to develop a comprehensive plan for improving Texas Southern and Prairie View. The plan is supposed to include steps to achieve five broad goals, which are to:

* Further define and enhance the missions of Texas' historically Black institutions and ensure that they don't promote racial identifiability but instead foster desegregation.

* Strengthen existing academic programs at Prairie View and Texas Southern, and authorize new, "high value, high demand" programs there that are not "unnecessarily duplicative" of programs offered by nearby majority White colleges. (OCR officials have contended that Texas Southern does not academically distinguish itself from the University of Houston, nor Prairie View from Texas A&M University.)

* Provide Texas' historically Black institutions with the facilities and other resources needed to support existing and new programs.

* Improve facilities and campus environments at Texas Southern and Prairie View so that they are equal to majority White counterparts in landscape, ambience and appearance, quality, adequacy and space availability.

* Improve the recruitment, retention and participation rates of African American and Hispanic students at the state's majority White colleges.

"We have agreed to a process and it is my hope that the state of Texas will come together and live up to this agreement. We have reached resolution on this issue," says Raymond Pierce, deputy assistant secretary for the civil rights office, who negotiated the Texas settlement. "These are old (legal) cases and a chapter in American history that needs to be resolved."