Tennessee Republicans Made Massive Change To This HBCU, and People Aren’t Having It

By Jessica Washington

It seemed like things couldn’t get any more shocking after Tennessee Republicans kicked two Black State Representatives out of the State Legislature last year. But the latest move affecting Tennessee’s only publicly-funded, Historically Black University still managed to send shock waves across the state.

Last Thursday, Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who is white, signed a bill from the majority white legislature removing the entire board of Tennessee State University.

The HBCU did not take kindly to the change, issuing a strong rebuke of the decision.

“This is unprecedented, unfortunate, and uncharted waters for any public university in the state,”wrote Tennessee State University in a statement obtained by The Tennessean. “We believe this legislation will disrupt our students’ educational pursuits, harm the image of the University, and remove a Board that had achieved success in its enhanced governance of TSU.” The statement also defended the university’s use of taxpayer dollars.

Republicans have consistently complained about the leadership at TSU. An audit on Thursday—showing “significant procedural deficiencies,” including serious issues with housing at TSU — may have been the final nail in the coffin for the board. Although, it’s worth noting that the audit found “no malfeasance or fraud by executive leadership.”

However, Democrats say that the issues with the TSU have to do with chronic underfunding.

“Tennessee State University was denied those resources, and because they were denied the resources there were problems that occurred,” said State Rep. Justin Pearson, who was ousted from the State Legislature last year. “But instead of us rectifying the problems that we created through racist policies by underfunding Tennessee State University, we’re now advocating to vacate their board.”

Democratic State Rep. Bo Mitchell also noted that he’d seen plenty of “horrendous” audits of other universities, but it was suspicious that only in the case of an HBCU did Republicans decide to remove an entire board.

“Have we ever, ever vacated an entire board of a university before? Have we ever done that?” asked Mitchell, according to ABC News.

Republicans countered that this was not going to be a big shift.

“All we’re talking about is the board … It’s vacating some personalities and bringing others in,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth told ABC News. “The goal is to make TSU successful.”

The new appointees are also Black, and primarily come from the business community, including executives at Bank of America Memphis and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.

However, despite the new board being Black, on social media some folks were skeptical about what type of representation to expect.

“The new board will be sage steele, jason whitlock, stacey dash, kanye west, and rachel dolezal,” joked one user.