Guest column: Critical friends of Morris College have a role to play

First and foremost, I'm a proud and faithful Morris College alumna. More than 30 years ago, my classmates and I found Morris to be a family oriented institution with deep historical significance, worthy of respect and admiration. There I discovered and developed my passion for education, my love for mathematics and leadership skills that my professors recognized and encouraged. Thanks to them, I helped to found the Math Club, tutored in the computer lab on campus and at Alice Drive Elementary School in Sumter and was elected to represent the student body as the 1992 Miss Morris College. I'm pleased to say I maintain valuable, personal relationships with several of the professors who invested themselves in me and my classmates today.

Further, my experience with the Black Executive Exchange Program and learning from the motivational Thursday morning guest speakers empowered me to seek out internships. Thanks to Morris College, I won and completed one research summer internship at SUNY-Brook University in Long Island, New York, and a second one at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, as a teacher assistant. Those and other opportunities helped me to build a resume prior to graduation and to develop valuable leadership skills.

Nearly a decade ago, during my tenure as president of The South Carolina Education Association - the highest elected office in the oldest organization of education professionals in South Carolina - I told Morris College students these things when I spoke to them during American Education Week. I illustrated for them how my experience at Morris College left an indelible impression on me, personally and professionally, and how it laid the foundation for the career and life that I've lived.

I am who I am today because I took the Morris College motto to heart: I entered to learn, and I departed to serve. I urged my audience to bring the same spirit to their Morris College experience and to carry the same mission with them through their lives.

To be more specific, I told students in 2014, "A college whose motto tells a student 'Enter to Learn' is making a promise: It promises that this is a place where learning occurs, where opportunity is available, where skills can be developed and where experience can be gained. In fact, it's making the promise that everything you will need to know, to be and to have, in order to build a life for yourself and your loved ones, can be found here."

Morris College made that promise to me, and I have reaped incalculable benefits from my choice to accept and act upon that promise. All that I have read and heard through the past 30 years leads me to conclude that Morris College continues to make and honor that promise today.

To be clear, no one has ever mistaken Morris College for any of the state's larger and better-endowed colleges and universities. So many others, public and private, are larger and better known, whose size and fame afford more of the perks, privileges and social activities that attract some kinds of customers. Since its founding in 1908, Morris College has always operated in the margins of generosity and devotion shown by the Baptist Educational and Missionary Convention of South Carolina and by the families who enroll their sons and daughters there and by the thousands of its faithful alumni. Even among the state's community of private HBCUs, Morris has always been different. For so many students and families, Morris College's differences are what made it attractive and ideal.

But experience teaches us that "different from" has never necessarily meant "lesser than." Even those critics who have emerged in recent weeks cannot deny the devotion to students shown by Morris College's professors and staff members through the COVID crisis, as recent graduates have noted. In the past year alone, while Morris College has worked hard to regain ground lost to COVID, The Sumter Item has publicized some of the differences that show the college innovating, pushing boundaries on behalf of its students, continuing to broaden the scope of their horizons.

For example, The Item reported on the "music, cheers and laughter" on campus during last October's Cybersecurity Day. It highlighted Professor Radman Ali's work since the 1960s to bring more than $18 million in grants to the campus, expanding its offerings in technology and opening its cybersecurity lab.

It described the college's unique partnership with Louisiana-based Cyber.org, "which creates pathways for minority students to enter into the cybersecurity workforce," and "creates pathways for visually impaired students and neuro-divergent students to enter into cybersecurity." The company's program coordinator told The Item, "With 700,000 job openings in cybersecurity, a lack of diversity in the cyber field and a desire to meet cyber needs, an HBCU campus like Morris College was a good place to start."

And last December, The Item reported on the opening of the college's ESports Lab, announcing in the first lines of its report, "Morris College has high hopes for its students. To ensure they reach their full potential, it is giving them ample space and opportunities. On Thursday morning, the college unveiled its newly built Innovation Technology Laboratory, housed in its science building."

To open that event, President Leroy Staggers announced the offering of three new academic majors in the field of technology, and he said, "As job markets continue to change and expand, the college wants to ensure current and future students have ample opportunities to explore them." Using the lingo of modern college students in his field, one guest expert told The Item, "Morris College is lit."

More illustratively, The Item quoted junior cybersecurity major Rebekah Grissett at that event. "I've seen the upside and the downsides; the program is constantly changing. In college, take as many chances as they give you because not at every school are they willing to hand out scholarships left and right, to give out internship opportunities. There are places where people are not learning this stuff," she said. "For a college that you go to be so willing to pour into you, when they offer you stuff, you take it even if you're not interested in it. These are opportunities that they're handing to us for free; all you have to do is do your part."

Such devotion by professors, innovations by administrators and insights from students do not reflect a college that is stagnant or in decline, but they reflect what Morris College has always exemplified: a commitment to grow where it's planted, despite its challenges, with the support of those who care enough.

The challenges of COVID struck every home, family and college campus in South Carolina differently. In the case of Morris College, some students opted to go home or elsewhere, which impacted the college's enrollment and its budget. But at precisely the same time, President Staggers and other administrators led the college through the rigorous and time-consuming process of re-certification by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, and they forged partnerships to bring innovative new opportunities to their students. These are the acts of leaders who keep their eyes on the prize and their missions before them.

Enrollments, budgets and staffing shortages are serious matters that cannot be ignored, and I perceive they are not being ignored by the men and women charged with leading Morris College through its present challenges. But those leaders cannot meet the need alone, and in the controversy that some have drawn into public conversation, I believe there is a difference between being a critical friend and being a critic. To see my alma mater growing and thriving again, its critical friends have a role to play.

At the height of the COVID pandemic in April 2021, BEMCSC President Donald E. Greene said in a public statement, "Morris College is a place where I believe our future leaders will be birthed. It does not matter the background, where you come from. Every student has potential. So we as the Baptist E&M Convention support Morris College, and we're going to do all that we can to support Morris College."

That's the commitment of a critical friend at a critical time. Today, Morris College needs fewer critics and more critical friends like Dr. Greene. I'm proud to add my voice to his call for support.

Likewise, my own personal and professional experience as an alumna leads me to reiterate the statement made by Miss Grissett, the junior cybersecurity major with a bright future ahead of her: "All you have to do is do your part."

Bernadette R. Hampton is a Morris College alumna in the Class of 1992 and lives in Beaufort.