Recent talks of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s plan to merge Southern University-New Orleans with the University of New Orleans have been plaguing newspapers across the state the past few weeks.
Many people do not want to close the historically black university, and each day there’s another person giving a new defense for the so-called-university we call SUNO.
During the long debate, the truth has come out — SUNO is a pointless university to sustain and needs to close.
And the strangest part of it is SUNO’s defenders seem to point out why it should close.
First, some background on the situation. SUNO enrolls around 3,100 students, and operates on a state budget of $40.3 million, according to its 2009-10 annual report.
SUNO claims a 9.28-percent six-year graduation rate, but the U.S. Department of Education claims a 5 percent graduation rate — either way, it’s extremely low, and it’s costing tax dollars.
With a low graduation rate established, many SUNO defenders have publicly made unintelligent statements about why SUNO students don’t graduate.
Randolph Scott, SUNO’s alumni association president, established his interesting philosophy on higher education at SUNO.
“Southern University was not developed to graduate people,” Scott said, according to the Times-Picayune. “We don’t have to graduate anybody.”
OK, so we have a $40.3 million-a-year university that isn’t supposed to graduate people.
Let’s hear more.
Southern University System President Ronald Mason Jr. complained SUNO doesn’t have the facilities necessary to graduate students.
“The tools we need to give the state a quality higher education product are being inhibited because of a lack of facilities,” he said.
While they may claim this, SUNO was actually allotted $124 million from FEMA after Hurricane Katrina — $96 million remains unspent, according to the Times-Picayune.
Clearly, the administration seems to be clueless when it comes to running the university.
Another opposition to the merger claims SUNO students would not be qualified for acceptance assuming UNO and SUNO merged.
At the present time, SUNO’s minimal admission requirements call for students to graduate high school with a 2.0 GPA.
If there were a merger, admissions requirements would probably find a median between UNO’s higher requirements and SUNO’s obnoxiously low ones, but this points out a problem.
To be frank, the extremely low graduation rate probably occurs because SUNO’s admission requirements are so low.
And what happens to a college when it’s too easy to get into? You get a mess of people who probably aren’t too bright and aren’t too concerned with graduating.
Just to prove this, listen to this statement from a SUNO student:
A 35-year-old SUNO senior made the outrageous claim that SUNO is the only place where a 35-year-old can walk back into education.
This is possibly one of the most ignorant, false statements I’ve heard in a long time, showing the student body can’t even make a valid argument to keep the school open.
I attended UNO for a semester, and there are hundreds of men and women who are just walking back into education who are at least 35 years old. In fact, my friend’s 40-something-year-old mother just started classes again at UNO.
I even share the classroom with a few older people here at LSU.
So clearly, SUNO is not the only place where older people can step back in to education.
Then there’s the racism argument — the one everyone seems to be making. The argument says a merger would destroy a historically black university.
There’s a problem with this argument, however. Defending the closure of an institution for being historically black is just as racist as segregation was, but segregation ended in the 1960s. We should forget about it, and people need to stop making invalid arguments using racism as a defense.
In the end, SUNO needs to close. It’s costing tax dollars, and no one has given a valid defense in favor of keeping the school open.
If students need a college to get into with virtually no admission requirements, then send them to Delgado Community College, where there are also very little requirements.
Last but not least, take the remaining tax and FEMA dollars and have them put to good use in the betterment of UNO.
No one seems to be proud of the public university system in New Orleans, but it’s possible that closing an essentially useless school could lead to the betterment of others. We’ve got to cut our losses — by cutting SUNO.
Chris Grillot is a 19-year-old mass communication and English major from New Orleans. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Cgrillot.
 
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Contact Chris Grillot at [email protected]