Universities: Courting the Negro

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When a top Negro student happens to be a crack athlete, too, all of academe beckons. Dale Dover, son of a New York City cab driver, was a basketball star at Evander Childs High School in The Bronx and compiled an 89.4 grade average. He was eagerly pursued by Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Brown, N.Y.U., Penn, Rochester and Oklahoma, visited most of those campuses, and still has unused airline tickets around the house. He applied to six schools, was accepted by all, has narrowed the final choice to either Harvard or Columbia. Dale took so many courses that he entered his senior year just one credit short of graduation and could have loafed. He didn't. "I like to catch the kids who are ahead of me," he says. He already has his lifetime vocational goals outlined. Successively, he hopes to be a professional basketball player, journalist, dancer, politician and actor. His intention, he says, is "to be a complete man."

Instant Negritude. Among the chosen Negroes who are not entirely uncritical of the fact that colleges now covet them, Cecilia McDaniel, an A student in Winston-Salem, N.C., sees her sudden popularity as a form of "reverse racism—an effort of schools to purge themselves of a longtime discrimination against Negroes." She was offered scholarships by Northwestern, Chicago and N.Y.U., probably will choose N.Y.U. because she is interested in drama, figures N.Y.U.'s Broadway-influenced drama department is "more practical" than Northwestern's. Judy Johnson, a bright, outspoken Richmond, Calif., girl, has been accepted by Stanford. She is deeply concerned with civil rights activities and has highly independent opinions (the Rev. Martin Luther King is "too religious" and Stokely Carmichael is "self-defeating"). Judy is disappointed that the colleges are apparently more interested in her color than her talent. She complains: "It's defeating to find out that after all your years of striving and attempting to excel in school, that it comes down to the issue of your race again—and the de-emphasis of the individual."

Some of the officials engaged in the pursuit of Negro scholars also have their doubts about how these students are chosen. "A great many colleges want to achieve instant Negritude," contends Benjamin McKendall, an assistant director of the College Entrance Examination Board. What they are really competing for, he argues, are "Negroes who act like white kids." Chicago Admissions Dean Charles D. O'Connell, on the other hand, is convinced that the competition for Negroes is nothing less than a sincere effort by colleges "to improve race relations and society." The colleges also benefit, he argues, since the Negro students "inject a note of reality" into higher education. "They're impatient with high-sounding but empty idealism; they give as much as they take out."