CUNY Retention Program
For Black Males Under Fire
New York group says initiative violates Civil Rights Act of 1964.
By Jamal Watson
NEW YORK city
Officials at New York’s Medgar Evers College (MEC) are challenging a complaint filed last month by a local civil rights group charging that a program created to help Black males stay in college is discriminatory.
The New York Civil Rights Coalition has asked the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights division to halt MEC’s “Black Male Initiative.” The complaint also asks that the City University of New York not implement the program at its 18 other colleges in the city.
In filing the complaint, Michael Meyers, executive director of the coalition, argues that MEC’s program violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination by colleges and universities that receive federal assistance.
“What they have been doing is just wrong,” says Meyers, adding that the coalition can demonstrate that MEC is illegally accepting federal funds to initiate programs that he says blatantly discriminate against women and others.
But Dr. Edison O. Jackson, MEC’s president, staunchly defends the program he started. Jackson scoffs at Meyers’ assertions that the program, which has been utilized by scores of Black men, is exclusionary.
“We are not doing anything inappropriate, and we have not done anything inappropriate,” says Jackson, who has served as president of the Brooklyn college for 17 years. Most of MEC’s students are first-generation college students. Ninety-four percent are Black and 76 percent are women. In recent years, the college, like many academic institutions across the nation, has had a difficult time retaining Black men.
