Mapping out vision for Cheyney U. to create another legacy “T
hey have far exceeded my most sanguine expectations. Their comportment has been commendable.”
Those are the words to describe students at the Institute for Colored Youth in 1851. It was John Stewart Rock who complimented his students.
Rock was an African-American teacher, dentist, physician and attorney. He is best known for being the first AfricanAmerican admitted to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court — though an early death in 1866 robbed him of the chance to actually argue a case before our nation's highest court.
Today, we know of the Institute for Colored Youth as Cheyney University, the only historically black college or university in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
Besides the school's name, much has changed at Cheyney since those days in 1851. Throughout the 20th century, there were allegations of corruption by administrators. There was also condescension — yes, some, but not all, racially charged — by some of Cheyney's PASSHE colleagues.
Now, with Cheyney's enrollment shrinking by well over half since 2006, there have been calls to close the institution's doors. These calls have become louder in the halls of Harrisburg, as the school is more than $30 million in the red.
Sister PASSHE universities shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from their respective budgets to dam the flood of debt incurred by Cheyney. To be sure, these other PASSHE schools are dealing with their own budgetary woes.
So, while PASSHE and other officials attempt to fill the credit holes at Cheyney, a sustainable vision for the institution's future is in order, is it not?
Cheyney, which started off on Sixth Street in Center City Philadelphia as the ICY in 1837, has a lengthy and rich history. It is an institution worth saving, but the question is how to accomplish that monumental task without costing PASSHE in Harrisburg and the other 13 state universities hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from their respective budgets.
To get us there, let's look at how we can tie in a future vision of Cheyney with the institution's history. Cheyney's rich history should be celebrated and respected, but that needs to be done in a fiscally responsible fashion.
One way of doing that? Make it a school that focuses on a few, specialized areas. Consider the Cheyney University of Health Sciences, with colleges within it being named after prominent African-Americans tied to the school, history or its mission some way.
To do that, we can return to John S. Rock, one of the very early African-American instructors at the ICY. Rock was practicing dentistry before eventually jumping over the race hurdle that prevented him from studying medicine in Philadelphia. Rock was mentored by the ICY's first African-American instructor, Ishmael Locke, grandfather of Alain Locke of Harlem Renaissance fame. Teaching at the ICY as an evening instructor, Locke eventually left for a job in Providence, R.I.
That is when Rock took over until he moved to Boston's Beacon Hill to first practice medicine and then law before dying very young of tuberculosis. The point of this brief history lesson: Illustrate that Cheney's past can be the conceptual bedrock for its future.
Should the Cheyney University of Health Sciences, as one might dub it, come to fruition, perhaps the John S. Rock Dental School could be a key component? This would be not only of historical but also of strategic significance, since there are no dental schools in Delaware, none in southern New Jersey and only three in Pennsylvania.
And what about becoming an eye doctor? A potential namesake for an optometry or ophthalmology school at the Cheyney University of Health Sciences, you ask? Enter David K. McDonogh, the first AfricanAmerican ophthalmologist. Though McDonogh did not study in Philadelphia, he did his undergraduate work in the Lehigh Valley, at Lafayette College.
Is it not appropriate to consider seriously making someone like McDonogh the namesake for such a school of ophthalmology or optometry? PASSHE could then join the dental and ophthalmology or optometry schools with one for public health, naming it after the Rev. Richard Allen.
Allen may be best known for establishing the African Methodist Episcopal Church after being asked to leave a predominately white church for refusing to pray in the church's “negro” section.
However, Allen was instrumental in treating fellow Philadelphians stricken with yellow fever in 1793, largely because 18th-century thinking was that those of African lineage were immune to the disease.
Doesn't the Richard Allen College of Public Health have a ring to it? With all of the talk of economic sustainability whirling around Harrisburg, it is time to think, too, about how historical roots enhance the legitimacy of a struggling university.
Doesn't the oldest historically black college and university deserve that much?
Christopher Brooks is a professor of history at East Stroudsburg University.