Barry Saunders: I’ve got a plan that’ll save my alma mater, St. Augustine’s. | Opinion
Thirty years ago, when I returned to North Carolina, I hunted down the phone number of my very first girlfriend.
Well, I considered her my girlfriend, and had probably thought about her every day since we’d met as freshmen at St. Augustine’s College, nee University. I excitedly called her up.
She didn’t remember me.
Once I made her recollect just who the heck I was, I asked if she kept in touch with our alma mater. No, she snapped. The only time she heard from the school, she said, was “when they’re begging for money.” She trashed their fund-raising appeals.
I was doubly hurt, first because a woman for whom I’d pined for 20 years didn’t remember me, and second because she thought so little of St. Aug’s. Unfortunately, it appears that she isn’t alone in ignoring any “SOS” from St. Aug’s. The school recently lost its accreditation and as a result is hemorrhaging money and students.
St. Aug’s vowed to “appeal to a higher authority” after losing its accreditation appeal, and has resorted to a fund-raising scheme that is, frankly, beneath its dignity: a Go-Fund Me page.
Now, Go-Fund Me sites are godsends for people who break a leg and need help getting over the hump until they return to work. A school with the pedigree of St. Aug’s, though, a school with thousands of alumni out in the world, shouldn’t have to resort to the educational equivalent of standing on the corner shaking a tin cup: “Hey brother, can you spare $5 million?”
Nor should it have to beg alumni or the business community: y’all know that St. Aug’s, like many small private schools, needs help, has to pay bills and employees, feed and house students.
That “Falcon Pride” alumni are always talking about? It isn’t worth a farthing when the power company wants its money.
Seeing the dire predicament my beloved alma mater is in (true, I only attended about long enough to eat lunch), I’ve been dedicating a lot of brain power to finding a solution. I’ve found one which will no doubt elicit replies of “Uh oh, he must be day-drinkin’ again.” But unless you have a better idea, listen up:
Why doesn’t Shaw University in Raleigh — a HBCU which itself has financial and enrollment woes — and St. Augustine’s merge and ensure the healthy survival of both, instead of swimming individually against the same tide and possibly going under? Developers are champing at the bit to get their hands on the billion-dollar, downtown property upon which sits Shaw, yearning to swoop it up for a song.
Shaw can ensure that song won’t be a lullaby — as in Goodbye, HBCUs — and deal from a position of strength by combining resources with St. Aug’s. To me, it’d be the best merger since The Temptations & Supremes.
The website for Inside Higher Ed lists more than a dozen schools that closed or announced they were closing last year. It also noted that most of those that shuttered their doors “largely fit the same profile: mostly small, private, tuition-dependent institutions with meager endowments.”
Bingo!
Check this out, though: one St. Augustine’s College (in Chicago) announced it was merging with Lewis College last year. Of course, one thing working against the success of such a brilliant idea here is that few from either local institution may be willing to cede power or give up their personal fiefdoms.
Isn’t it better, though, to share power over a vibrant and vital institution — St. Shawgustine’s, anyone? — than to have to go through life introducing yourself as an alum of the late, lamented We-Ain’t Here-No-Mo’ University?
This story was originally published March 10, 2024 at 5:00 AM.