For North Carolina Agricultural & Technical (NCA&T) University, the 2017 headlines were the last straw.
NCA&T is an Historically Black institution in Greensboro, N.C. On Oct. 8, 2017, John Cook was murdered at an apartment complex on the west side of the city. Cook had attended NCA&T three years before, and police shared that detail with local reporters.
Joy Cook, left, associate vice chancellor for strategic communication and chief communications officer at Fayetteville State University, at work on campus.
Although Cook’s murder had nothing to do with NCA&T, the news connected the incident with NCA&T's homecoming, happening coincidentally at the same time. Todd Simmons, associate vice chancellor of university relations at NCA&T, said alumni were so angry he thought they would “burst into flames.”
So, he and his team got to work. Dr. Nicole Pride, NCA&T’s former chief of staff, penned an op-ed addressing the negative narratives being constructed around NCA&T.
“For two solid weeks, that op-ed was in the number one spot of the most-read opinion pieces on the Greensboro News and Record website, because it touched such a nerve with people who had borne the brunt of that unfairness for so many years,” said Simmons. “Now, when anything happens, the media stop, and think, and ask themselves, ‘Does this really have anything to do with NCA&T?’”
By “clearing up the home media environment,” Simmons said, NCA&T was finally able to engage with the news on stories of success and academic research.
Changing an HBCU’s relationship with media is just one aspect of the work done by Simmons and other brand leaders. That work would be made easier with resources that many HBCUs do not have, considering many HBCUs have long been underfunded. However, within the last two years, there has been renewed interest in the work of HBCUs given the nationwide focus on racial justice following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others coupled with the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black communities.
