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Post by cancertiger on Apr 8, 2014 12:43:26 GMT -6
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Post by mrevans on Apr 8, 2014 18:39:13 GMT -6
I sympathize with your feelings, but we need to get real. Can Grambling alumni do more to support our alma mater? Yes! Can we do a lot more? Maybe. However, we cannot compete with Ivy League schools and big public universities like the University of Michigan or the University of California [at Berkeley]. There are two reasons that we need to turn our attention elsewhere: - We do not have the numbers. In its entire history from 1901 to 2013, GSU had about 40,000 graduates. If every GSU graduate were alive today, then there would be only enough of us to fill one side of LSU's Tiger Stadium.
- We do not have the money. For most of GSU's history, most of its graduates were school teachers who earned school teacher salaries. Our "rich" alumni are retired professional athletes. Ivy League graduates own countries. They run multinational corporations. They are heirs to great fortunes.
Whining about the Ivy League and major public universities is not just misplaced, it is counterproductive. It is like demanding that we jump over the Empire State Building. Nobody can jump over the Empire State Building, but many people can climb the stairs to the observation deck. Rather than setting our sights on the Ivy League, we should do our best to close the gap between Southern University alumni support for SUBR and our support for GSU. We should expect more of the vendors that we do business with. We don't have LSU's numbers. We don't even have Southern's numbers. However, we do have numbers. And, none of us has a grandfather who invented sand, but neither are we living under overpasses. We have some of leverage. We need to use our leverage to increase business support for GSU. This is a big one. Whatever the failings of Dr. Pogue, there are people in his Administration who have done much more damage to GSU than he could ever think about. They had responsible positions before Dr. Pogue arrived. They are Gramblinites. Doubt me? Ask anyone who has attended GSU over the last six years or so. We tolerate this behavior. It is high time that we demand the best from everyone at GSU. It is high time that we demand the best of ourselves. It is high time that we gave it.
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