On Thursday, Alabama State University officials and administrators will travel to Concordia College in Selma to help.
Concordia, the nearly-100-year-old historically black college that has served the western portion of Alabama, is closing its doors for good. It can no longer afford to stay open.
ASU has long been a sister school to Concordia, and as such it will welcome many of Concordia’s students who wish to complete their degrees. But ASU officials aren’t stopping there.
According to a press release from ASU, numerous school officials — including a rep from each of ASU’s different colleges and its financial aid department — will travel to Concordia to work with its students who would like to transition from Concordia to ASU.
It’s a great move for everyone involved.
And it’s a sign of the kind of leadership that ASU has sorely lacked in the past.
More than anything, bad press has killed ASU over the years. Some — maybe even most — of it has been the school’s own doing, as it skipped from one insane controversy to another.
But an even bigger problem has been the lack of imagination among the executive staff — the inability to consider grand ideas or to take the innovative approach.
That appears to be changing under new university president Quinton Ross.
For a school that so desperately needs to change its public image nothing could fit better than a president who will not just send regards and a press release to Concordia but will send a team; not just go to the State House to sway lawmakers into giving more, but will use his influence and connections to bring state lawmakers by the dozen to ASU to show them where their money is being spent; not just rely on the same methods of fundraising to offset the debt he’s inherited from past administrations, but will use government programs to restructure that debt.
This is the sort of change that makes a lasting difference for ASU.
Because let’s be honest: there are a whole bunch of people who want to see the place fail. Those people love to see stories in the local media of ASU officials bickering or screwing up or doing generally dumb things.
So they can point and laugh at the black college. (Or, if you’re a governor, so you can, with very little resistance, cripple a funding source for state Democrats.)
If you doubt this, let me ask you a question: What is the long term credit ratings for Auburn University or the University of Alabama? What about UAB? Troy? AUM?
Of course you don’t know.
But if you read any one of a half dozen news sources from around the state last week, you learned that ASU’s had recently been downgraded due to past debt and high board turnover. And in some places, you also learned that ASU’s long-term outlook had been labeled “stable,” which was quite the improvement.
Overall, the long-term outlook forecast was probably a bigger deal than the initial debt downgrade, but … why?
Why on earth do I know this information about ASU and not about any other university in the state?
Why does ASU get so much attention?
Simple: Because stories that paint ASU in an unfavorable light draw eyeballs (clicks, hits, engagement, viewers, etc.).
This is a simple fact. Trust me, I’ve seen the numbers.
The only way to change that reality is to introduce a new one.
Ross seems to understand that. Unlike past administrations, his doesn’t seem to be focused on the singular approach of complaining about bad news. Instead, they’re working to introduce their own narrative, provide their own news stories.
It’s an approach that other universities and companies use all the time. Because it’s effective and it’s fair.
And in ASU’s case, it’s reality-altering.
