Black College Diversifies, Luring Russian Town

[Sistermadly]

A friend sent this to me - apparently one of the (white) Russian female students pledged an NPHC sorority. I have to warn you though - some of the comments they made about this particular HBCU were pretty unflattering.

From the NY Times
March 12, 2003


March 12, 2003

Black College Diversifies, Luring Russian Town
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER


LORMAN, Miss., March 7 — It is not easy getting white students to come here, to Alcorn State University, a tiny, historically black campus tucked away in the lush green isolation of southwestern Mississippi, 25 miles from the nearest McDonald's or movie theater.

So when the new coach of the tennis team, Tony Dodgen, recruited a player from Russia back in 1998, no one had any reason to think that he had stumbled upon the way to make Alcorn more inviting to white Mississippians. How could one white face make a difference?

But then the player, Mikhail Frolov, persuaded his girlfriend to join him. The two each brought more of their friends over from Russia. And Mr. Frolov's mother, a high school English teacher, began to tell her students about the university in America that was giving away full scholarships.

Four and a half years later, Alcorn is home to a thriving pod of Russians. Mr. Frolov is a certified public accountant, and no fewer than 23 students from his hometown, Voronezh, are enrolled here as undergraduates studying literature or business, as graduate students in nursing or computer science, as athletes or musicians, and even as unexceptional students with a flair for throwing off-campus parties where everyone is welcome, and where language and race add up to even less of a social barrier than the drinking age.

Now, Alcorn's president, Clinton Bristow, looks at his Russian students and sees hope for the kind of racial diversity that he has long desired for this school, and that the courts have mandated for Mississippi's formerly segregated public colleges and universities. If Alcorn ever achieves such diversity, he says, it will be because white Mississippians decide they can be comfortable here.

And though he would never say so in a recruiting brochure, that is where his conspicuous Russians come in.

"You like to see more people that look like you, even though they might be from a different culture," Dr. Bristow said. "They've made it possible to ease race relations, and in a state that has had some difficulty with racial issues in the past."

Alcorn, founded in 1871, has been caught up in those difficulties for 28 years, ever since a black sharecropper, Jake Ayers, sued the state, contending that its three black public universities — Alcorn, Jackson State, and Mississippi Valley State — had been neglected for decades. Mr. Ayers demanded equal financing and facilities for the black campuses, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which ruled for the plaintiffs in 1992.

But settlement talks dragged on for a decade. Finally, a year ago, a federal judge approved a $503 million settlement, to be spread over 17 years: the state would pay $246 million for academic programs, $75 million for construction, and up to $105 million for endowments, but the public universities would have to reach at least 10 percent nonblack enrollment for three consecutive years before they could gain full control over their endowments.

So the pressure to recruit white students is intense at Alcorn — even as historically black colleges across the country are doing the same, whether to satisfy court orders or self-imposed diversity goals, or merely to make up for declining black enrollment.

At Alcorn today, 261 white students make up 8.3 percent of the student body — more than twice the percentage five years ago. But all but a few dozen are enrolled in graduate programs at Alcorn's satellite campuses in Natchez and Vicksburg, a spokeswoman said.
Dr. Bristow, who became president in 1995 and is now a finalist for the presidency of Towson University in Maryland, already had some money to invest in scholarships for nonblack students when Mr. Dodgen approached him at the end of his dismal first year as tennis coach.

Mr. Dodgen had sent letters to hundreds of high schools and potential recruits across the country, but struggled to get the attention of anyone outside Mississippi. Then he learned of a Web site for international high school athletes, and saw Mr. Frolov's name and tennis credentials.

Sight unseen, he offered Mr. Frolov a full scholarship at Alcorn. Sight unseen, Mr. Frolov — who had spent a year as an exchange student in Idaho and desperately wanted to return to the United States — accepted.

Coach Dodgen did not stop at Mr. Frolov, who was the Southwest Athletic Conference men's champion in 2000 and graduated in 2001 with a 3.7 grade-point average. He recruited Australians and Czechs and Africans, and eventually even some Americans, and has taken the team to the conference championships every year since 1999.

Mr. Frolov said he did not give much thought to Alcorn's reputation in the United States. "After I saw the full scholarship, I really didn't care where I go," he said.

And for the Russian students who have arrived since, the calculation is much the same.

"It's not the best school, but just to get to the States — " said Dmitryi Chernyshev, 18, a sophomore, biding his time in the student union between midterm exams.

"It's worse than the education we had in Russia," said Alex Alexandrov, 20, a senior. "But it's America."

To save money for car or bus trips to New Orleans or the Gulf Coast beaches or to raves as far away as Miami, Mr. Alexandrov and three other students rent a room from an elderly woman 15 miles from campus. "We pay the electric and do a lot of gardening," Mr. Alexandrov said, and their landlady tolerates his drum playing.

Mr. Chernyshev and three others are living in a beat-up trailer a few paces outside the barbed-wire fence that rims the campus, just beyond the jurisdiction of the campus police. Their trailer has become the next best thing to a nightclub here.

Despite its role in their coming here, race seems of little consequence once they arrive, the Russian students said. Two Russian women made it onto Alcorn's Golden Girls sideline dance team; another was runner-up in a football-weekend pageant; still another pledged the Zeta Phi Beta sorority.

Mr. Frolov, the first Russian alumnus, said he never encountered racism until he left Alcorn to get his master's degree at the University of Mississippi. "At Ole Miss, some older people I talked to would make racist jokes or remarks, and I could see how racism happens," he said. "At Alcorn I didn't see it."

Catron Curtis, 24, a junior who has befriended several of the Russian students, said their presence on campus rarely prompted a second look anymore. "I think this school is real good at accepting people from different cultures," he said, adding, without a trace of sarcasm: "We had those people from Nebraska — Bill and Scott? And they were like the most popular people here."

David Kirkland, 23, a senior, said: "I'm actually closer to some of the Russians than some of the other African-American students on campus. It's difference. I like difference."

Stereotypes do surface, but friends laugh them off.

"Me, I'm thinking, the cold war — they just got through with Communism — they must be spies," Mr. Kirkland said. "I was totally ignorant at first."

Without naming names, Thomas Walker, 22, a senior, recounted how "One Russian told me we're all lazy, but he said it's because we drive anywhere we go on campus."

He laughed, and confessed: "It's true. Me, I can't walk a half a step."

Whether or not Dr. Bristow's grand plan succeeds in attracting white Mississippians to Alcorn, it is already raising sights, opening minds, fueling imaginations.

At lunch in the cafeteria, Benny Crawford, 25, talks of opening a business with a branch in Voronezh one day — and tries out his come-ons on Maria Pankova, 22. "Kak dela?" he says — How are you? — with a big smile and an accent straight out of Richton, Miss.

There are plenty of accents here, after all, and they are mutating all the time. There is Steve Fitzsimons, the Australian junior who curses in Russian.

And there is Eugenia Merculova, 22, the first Russian woman at Alcorn, who graduated two years ago and now works full time for the university. Her clipped consonants and turned vowels still give away her origins, but those vie with an acquired drawl that makes "but" rhyme with foot. "I've been told I have a ghetto accent," she said, not exactly sure what to think.

How this experiment will work for the Russian students, too, remains to be seen. It is an article of faith for them that their opportunities after graduation will be far greater here than in Russia. But while Mr. Frolov recently passed his C.P.A. exam and works for a big accounting firm in Nashville, Ms. Merculova worries that she will spend the rest of her days in America here at Alcorn, until her work visa expires.

Fearing visa trouble if she left the country, Ms. Merculova said she had not returned home in two years. Her mother, who has never visited the United States, arrived for a two-week visit tonight.

"I asked her what she wanted to do, where she wanted to go," Ms. Merculova said. "She said, `I just want to hold you.' "

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