By Jatika Hudson
A panel of journalists, researchers and education leaders, spoke on “How We Talk About HBCUs” following recent controversial events from some campuses. Led by Dr. Roderick L. Smothers, executive director for the Center for the study of HBCUs at Virginia Union University, the panel included insight from Dr. Erin Lynch, creator of WeHBSeeUTV.org; Autumn A. Arnett, executive editor of The EDU Ledger; and Stephen Gaither, founder of HBCU Gameday.
In the past week, HBCUs have taken center stage following controversy about enrollment and dress codes that have led to many questions about belonging on an HBCU campus and the ways the institutions are perceived outside of their campuses. Last week, Howard University made headlines for unenrolling more than 500 students who didn’t complete the financial responsibilities to start their freshman year. On the same day the Howard news broke, Tuskegee University announced a ban on students wearing bonnets, durags, and pajamas on campus and to classes and the cafeteria.
The coverage surrounding both of these institutions has led to many conversations about how HBCUs are represented in the media and public discourse.
“We have so many positive things going on at our institutions, but the moment it goes against the status quo that places that HBCU in the leading light, there are blockers out there who would attempt to dim the light than rather shine it,” said Smothers.
What constitutes newsworthiness today is broad and wide, thanks to the quick and easy nature of social media and viral moments that often tell one-sided stories, the panelists said. But for institutional leaders, there is a need to do more to advance storytelling around the impact and significance of these universities.
“This idea that there is some sort of disparity between truth-telling and student-centeredness,”Lynch said. “We can tell the truth about the situation while still being student-centered. It means that we love the students so much that we have expectations of them to follow the processes that are written and established.”
Arnett talked about how the dual-sided aversions of media not telling the stories and inherent distrust some in the HBCU community have of media, can lead to broadcasted misrepresentations. In sharing a work experience she’s had, her dedication to fair storytelling for HBCUs spawned from a situation when an editor didn’t want her to mention how one school out performed a predominantly White institution.
“People aren’t not telling our stories because they don’t know [them]. This was a case of intentionally deciding but of who was not going to be elevated,” she said, recalling an experience at a former publication where senior leaders quashed a positive story about an HBCU outperforming the state’s flagship university.
