Visiting Morehouse

I just came back from a visit to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. The purpose of my visit was to interest students at this prestigious Black college in applying to the University of Washington for graduate or medical school.

In some ways my feelings for the African-American culture approach envy. African-Americans at their best have the kind of immigrant vigor I can remember from my own parents and grandparents. This kind of thing is disappearing from the contemporary Jewish community.

Despite these feelings, something bothers me not just about Morehouse. This school and other black schools I have visited seem insular, like the walled commutes I saw in Brazil. In Sao Paulo, I stayed with a middle class family in a modest home ... part of a development surrounded by a high wall, guards and guard dogs. Designed to protect these ordinary people from the realities of the Brazilian majority.

The Black campuses don't have guard dogs and the folks inside the walls certainly don't feel a need to protect their TVs and furniture from the milling masses. Still a wall seems to exist, or at least I felt I was living in a walled community. Like the walls in Brazil, this is a wall of choice, marking Morehouse off from the larger society. Choosing to attend Morehouse is an ethnic choice. The students and faculty have chosen to declare themselves different from the surrounding society.

I think this wall is present in all Black culture .. just as it is an any ethnic culture. Its existence alone proclaims a pride in African-American identity. There are, of course the expected tokens of ethnic and Morehouse pride. African themed pictures are present in some classrooms and bulletin boards reflect distinctive African-American cultural activities. I suspect this is great for kids who may have never before felt their world was controlled by people like them.

There is another side of living behind a wall. The Brazilians I met were Jewish and had much the same Israeli art in their homes one sees in US Jewish homes. Jews in the US, however do not need walls. Similarly, the feeling of being inside a wall at Morehouse makes me worry about the need for isolation to protect something important to the Morehouse community. Is Morehouse an expression of pride and confidence of an expression of the need to be protected?

The sense of isolation if heightened because this is an all male school. Indeed, the first night I stayed on campus I witnessed the emigration of female guests at curfew time. This was truly a strange scene, hundreds of coeds milling their way through the narrow gated exit from the Morehouse campus. Most of the girls did not have far to go. Spellman College, an all-black all girls school is immediately next-door. The Spellman girls go out one gate and in the other. I did not notice in the emigration of black guys from Spellman toward Morehouse. Are there walls within walls?

I don't understand the concept of an all-male college. Somehow all-female schools makes more sense to me. Women, after all, have their own culture that is threatened by the dominant male society. Girls being girls is probably a lot easier at Wellesley that it is at Harvard. Boys being boys somehow seems less important. Or is it that I think of boy schools only n terms of military academies? Morehouse is anything but a military academy Without the marching and hazing, "boys being boys" makes me think of athletics. Morehouse, however, has at best limited athletic pretensions. The only other model I can think of might be a Catholic seminary. Are there still Catholic colleges for boys other than seminaries?

I asked some of the guys about their choice of all-male school. Their answers added to my thoughts about insularity. The answers had something to do with the special needs of the "black male." I am not entirely sure what these special needs might be, or what the students think they might be. For some students it may be simply the freedom from sexual distractions, just as students at a military academy or a seminary "need" to be free of female distractions. No one told me they went to Morehouse out on a sense of male pride.

Walls aside, I suspect it would be of great value for more Americans to learn about Morehouse. That raises a thought. Is Morehouse a tourist destination in Atlanta? I did not see any sort of commercial activity around the campus. Come to think of it there is no tourist access at Brandeis either.

Back at my purpose, the UW does poorly in recruiting American students to our grad. programs despite the pre-eminence of the University of Washington in NIH funding for research in molecular pathology or vascular biology. My hunch was that few Morehouse students know much about the Udub. I hoped was to find American students with the kind of drive needed to succeed in graduate school. The kids I met certainly qualify. Their choice of Morehouse, clearly reflects a commitment to academic success. If some of the students choose to come to the University of Washington, I will look forward to learning more about student life at all male, all-black school.

One thought, just occurred to me. There are a small number of American Jews who are also African-American. I wonder if Morehouse has any Jewish students? a Jewish chaplain?