Are HBCUs Options? My Take on Tyrone Hankerson Jr.

I was 15 years old when I sat in the newsroom of The Amsterdam Newspaper, a black owned newspaper, just a week shy of my first publication. One of my bosses, was an editor who used to intern and now was in charge of helping the interns get acclimated.

I was nervous because I knew that I wanted to write, but the world of hard news was new to me. Nonetheless, my editor was excited to show me the ropes, and once he learned I was going to start my junior year of high school in two months, he had a new mission in mind. He was going to spend the whole summer convincing me to go to a Historically Black College or University.

Now if you are not familiar, HBCUs are institutions that were made to even the gap, so to speak. In the America of inequality and segregation, black people did not have the access to education like their white counterparts. So in 1837, a Quaker man by the name of Richard Humphreys founded Cheyney University, which was originally called the Institute for Colored Youth. Since that time there have been many more institutions that have come to fruition.

One of these universities is named Howard University…but before I get to that part of the story, let me keep telling you about my editor.

My editor spent the entire summer telling me the benefits of HBCUs. “You need to be around black people Marquita. Why would you want to learn with only white people? Learn your history!”  He said much more, but I forgot about it. Of course I had retorts to each argument. “I am around black people all the time, have you seen the size of my family? I don’t really care about other people around me when I learn. I know my history, I read a lot.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think HBCUs are bad, I think they are great, but I knew I most likely wouldn’t end up at one. That very summer, my mom and I were cultivating a college list and there were no HBCUs on it. Despite that, the entire summer consisted of my editor ranting about how these predominantly white institutions (PWIs) use black students as props and an HBCU would never do that. He was right; in fact all of his arguments were valid. I knew PWIs were going to use me as a prop to further diversity, but I knew that they would support me more financially... which leads me back to Howard.

If you have Twitter you would know that this week, news broke out about there being an embezzlement scandal at Howard University. According to a since deleted Medium article, six employees were fired for stealing scholarship money during the 2014-2017 time span. As the story continued to surface, a name came to the forefront. Tyrone Hankerson Jr. was a student employee in the Howard financial aid office and was often the one telling fellow students that their aid ran out. Yet, when people looked into his file this week, he had almost 500 thousand dollars in scholarship money over his four years. He was awarded scholarships in amounts that no normal student would ever see from the university. On top of all this money he awarded himself, his social media showed signs of a lavish lifestyle. Trips abroad, Gucci bags, shoes, Prada pants, and a HUGE mink fur coat. Please go look at the photo. Actually, here you go: 

Look at that fur! 

It's possible he did not do it, but it's not looking great for him right now. 

For a horrible situation, Twitter made the most of it and made thousands of funny tweets and memes about Tyrone. People were outraged, but couldn’t help but laugh at the audacity. I laughed along with them, but this whole situation reminded me of my number one issue with HBCUs: access. The amount of friends I had that wanted to go to an HBCU, but weren’t able to was astounding. It always boiled down to money. See I don’t know about you, but when I think of the student that needs to go to an HBCU, I think of students who don’t have the economic resources to go to college. Instead every year, I saw mostly middle class black students, some of whom were legacies, go off to HBCUs. And even the few that were less fortunate and made it to an HBCU, spent their life’s work finding outside scholarships.  

My editor may have talked down on PWIs, but PWIs know that money is the key to getting their diversity tokens. Smart and/or athletic black students, especially ones who are less fortunate, get money thrown at them. Now don’t read this as me saying money troubles don’t happen at PWIs, they do, but I never saw it at the scale I noticed at HBCUs. So as much as I laughed at all the Tyrone jokes...I’m still laughing to be honest, I’m beyond upset at the situation.

I’m upset that there were students at that school who were struggling and worrying about having the money to enroll next semester, but Tyrone and other employees were stealing money. The truth is, if an HBCU was an affordable option, perhaps I would have considered it, but I didn’t see the point of struggling financially just to sit next to people who looked like me. I know others may not agree with that, but that is how I felt. Tyrone feels like the living confirmation to all my fears about HBCUs, that it’s a place that says it empowers black people, but instead betrays them. Uses their willingness for community, to steal from them.

I am not saying all HBCUs are this way, but the fear is based in reality.

My PWI could have absolutely used some improvement. There were a lot of issues, but as a black woman, I always knew where the institution stood when it came to me. A PWI wasn’t made for black people, so we know there will be struggle when we arrive, in fact we prepare ourselves. But to be at a place that is meant for you, and then get bamboozled; it’s hurtful. I hope something good comes out of this mess. I hope HBCUs look at themselves and remember that they were made to give access to education and to fill the gaps that are still left open by institutionalized racism.

I will laugh at a Tyrone meme, but I will never laugh at playing with someone’s access to education. Education can change your life.

So the idea of messing around with people’s lives?

That is never funny.