WASHINGTON – Building on the theme “More Than A Game,” the AT&T Nation’s Football Classic got off to a modest start at Howard University Thursday with a symposium that featured Black scholars from various fields of science.
The science talk drew two to three dozen people—just a fraction of a percent of the 20,000 expected to turn out at RFK Stadium Saturday for the football game between the Morehouse College Maroon Tigers and the Howard University Bison.
Last year, the game drew 18,000 and generated $3 million in revenue, according to the Events DC organization, which is coordinating the event.
Much of Thursday’s discussion—one of several such academic-oriented events leading up to the football contest—focused on ways to ignite interest among minority students in the STEM fields.
While attendance for the science talk may have been wanting—indeed, at times the speakers’ voices echoed throughout the cavernous Cramton Auditorium at Howard—the insights shared by the scholars were abundant in profundity nevertheless.
Talks were given under the title “The Acting Black Theory: Scientific Discoveries at HBCUs that Change the Narrative of Black Students and Change the World as We Know It.”
Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, Associate Professor in the Counseling Psychology Department at Howard University, said the “Acting Black Theory” is meant to refute the widespread notion that Black students associate the acquisition of education with “acting White.”
