Oberlin College’s Generosity Must Touch All Children

Perspectives Essay
by Booker C. Peek
Professor of African American studies

President Nancy Dye succeeded in doing what no other president of Oberlin College ever has before when she convinced the Board of Trustees to guarantee that, in spite of the College’s tuition of over $25,000 per year, all Oberlin High School students who meet all the specific requirements will be able to study at Oberlin College for four or five years. In a word, this was an incredible feat of hers. Oberlin College now stands virtually alone among over 3000 other colleges, universities, etc. in America in seeking to raise the academic standards of children in our city and in our high school. 
Oberlin offers a first-rate education and boasts one of America’s finest conservatories of music. The average SAT is about 650 in the College of Arts & Sciences. For the economically and academically disadvantaged students, not all of whom are black, President Dye’s unbelievable feat and the generosity of the College’s Board of Trustees will have NO meaning at all unless we parents, teachers, ministers, garbage collectors, etc. all redouble our efforts to educate these children.

The College’s WAVE program that I coordinate (Words Are Very Empowering) is specifically targeted at these children and aims to strengthen them in their academic courses, especially in math and English. I am fully confident that black children, indeed all children, have the inherent ability to average 700-plus on the SATs, but we must immerse all of them in the most propitious environments over an 18-year period. WAVE can surely help children at all grade levels, even at the twelfth-grade level. But the goal to have our children doing “A” work in school and obtaining a very high score on the SATs must be pursued well before the first grade; this goal represents a very high standard. 
If you have read this far, you surely do care about our children’s education, and particularly about black children’s education. You want those $25,000-a-year-scholarships to be spread around among all students. You know that if we don’t act soon and with unfailing determination, all those dollars will go to the economically and academically advantaged, mostly white Oberlin High School students.

I strongly favor our doing far more than we now do to make sure that our mostly outstanding white students do even better in school. But this letter is to warn us that unless we make a very conscientious effort to stimulate, challenge and assist ALL children long before they get to Oberlin High, only a very select group of mostly white students will get the $25,000-plus each year. The average black or white student will be left out.
President Dye and the Board want ALL children to strive for excellence. They surely want them all to be fully qualified to take advantage of the College’s impressive benevolence and lofty goal to make Oberlin High one of Ohio’s best schools. The President and the Board have done their part and deserve enthusiastic kudos. Do yours by getting our children “caught up in the WAVE” ASAP by e-mailing me at booker.peek@oberlin.edu or by calling me at 775-2053; I will be available and very eager to get things rolling on a 24/7 basis. 
We want ALL local children to have a fair chance to take advantage of President Dye’s unbelievable feat of leading the Board to undertake this unprecedented act of generosity to raise academic standards in our town.