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Freedomways
Fourth Quarter 1968

of these demands in principle, but with recognition that they would have some difficulty in complying with them. There is no question that the universities will be sorely pressed to attempt to comply with the demands of the black students while clinging to their traditional procedures and formulations. But just as the white students are demanding that the universities dare to innovate, to refashion themselves to meet the needs of contemporary youth rather than to conform to the conventional images held by their trustees, so too are black students forcing the universities to reexamine their role and to readapt their methods.
Cultural differences between blacks and whites often handicap blacks in the middle-class-oriented Scholarship Aptitude Test which customarily determines who gets admitted to college. Some colleges have already taken steps in this direction; others plan to. The City University of New York, for example, has announced that it will annually guarantee admission and special help, if needed, to the top 100 graduates of each of New York's 60 academic high schools regardless of their scholastic averages. It will also seek authority to take over five high schools exhibiting "the greatest degree of disadvantage" in a move to upgrade the education of minority group youngsters. 
Similarly, the demand for more black instructors, and for black guidance counsellors, although understood and usually acceded to in principle by the schools, it is not easily accommodated. The most promising source of black faculty is obviously the Negro college campuses, but a raiding of these campuses in search of either black faculty or black students visits a considerable hardship on the Negro colleges, many of which are already in the midst of a personnel crisis of their own and are finding an increasing number of their faculty and students from among white applicants. The black student organizations, dedicated as they are to building up black dignity, black image, and black institutions, generally endorse the creation of strong, competent, truly black universities. Obviously there is an unresolved dilemma here which can probably only be satisfied through the identification or innovation of new teaching resources within the black community.
However, it is the demand for greater relevance in the curriculum which is stirring up most activity within academic circles. The "Black Studies Curriculum," or some synonym therefor, is fast becoming a status symbol at colleges across the country as they race to keep abreast of their black students' wishes, and as the urban ghettos bemoan the lack of teachers competent to bring relevant education

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-13 08:40:37