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Alumni
gather for history awareness
Members
of the Black Alumni Alliance reflected on their college
days.
By Erica
Parker
Black
Alumni Alliance members reminisced about their days at
TCU, while encouraging students to utilize the resources
on campus that weren’t available to them as students.
Graduates remembered dancing as SuperFrog, bum-rushing
the student government to promote multicultural programming,
and being the first person in their family to earn a diploma.
“When I first lived here in 1965, blacks had to stay
with blacks. The administrative office assigned roommates
by ethnicity,” said Mildred Martin Sims, a Black
Alumni Alliance member.
The women in Foster Hall branched out and petitioned the
administration to open roommate choice. Administrators
allowed residents to room with students of different ethnicities
by request only, said Sims, a 1969 graduate.
Sims lived in Foster two years, when the curfew was 11
p.m. Sunday through Thursday. Instead of resident assistants,
students had dorm mothers who were older women who gave
demerits when a resident came in past curfew and violated
rules.
The discussion was held Sunday in Foster with seven alumni.
Hollis R. Henley, a junior English major, said the mixer
shows alumni are concerned about the well-being of current
black students.
“It is very important that we know the history of
blacks at TCU so that we can learn from it and appreciate
what we have now and utilize our resources,” Henley
said.
Sims didn’t have any sororities to get involved in,
so she formed Students for the Advancement of African
American Culture Organization, a group for students to
voice their opinions about student activities not inclusive
to the black community.
“We had to stick together, because if we didn’t
there wouldn’t had been a lot of us together to make
a change,” Sims said.
Anthony Johnson, a 1998 graduate, said fewer resources
were available to him on campus than there are now.
“What resources we had, we milked it dry,” Johnson
said.
Henley said the difference between black alumni and black
students now is that alumni united because there was a
lack of concern for blacks. The alumni filled that void
with the Black Student Caucus, Programming Council, and
other recreational events that promoted a sense of community
for black students, Henley said.
“Now that they have opened those doors, it seems
to me that we are less passionate than they were about
establishing and maintaining that sense of community,”
Henley said. |
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Ty
Halasz/Staff Photographer
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| Joe
Breedlove, president of the Black Alumni Alliance,
fields student questions about his days at TCU on
Sunday evening at “Back in the Day” in
Foster Hall. |
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