Mississippi’s three historically Black universities, like other HBCUs around the country, are gradually becoming more diverse, and their administrators say the shift in enrollment is enhancing their mission, not detracting from it.
One of them, Alcorn State, is the first and only HBCU in Mississippi to reach a court-mandated goal of having 10 percent non-Black enrollment for three consecutive years. But Alcorn isn’t stopping there.
“While we have fulfilled what the court required … we are not content that we have addressed all of the issues of underrepresented groups on campus, not only that those groups begin to appear but that they feel they have community and a voice on our campus,” Alcorn President M. Christopher Brown II told Diverse in a recent interview.
Alcorn recently announced a number of measures it is taking to continue its diversity efforts after meeting the enrollment requirements set forth in a settlement agreement of 2002, which ended the 27-year Ayers v. Fordice lawsuit. Lead plaintiff Jake Ayers and others accused the state of establishing racially separate and unequal systems of higher education.
The settlement called for Mississippi’s HBCUs — Alcorn State, Jackson State and Mississippi Valley State universities — to share $503 million, most of which is to be spent over a 17-year period for academic programs. In order to tap into an endowment portion of the funds, enrollment diversity mandates must be met.
Alcorn is the only one of the three institutions to achieve those goals so far.
“While we believe in the Ayers enrollment goals, it is the minimum and not the ideal,” Brown said, adding that significant research has shown “that cross-racial and global engagement in the academic space improves academic outcomes and performance.”
