By Neil Offen

noffen@heraldsun.com; 419-6646

DURHAM -- Many historically black colleges and universities have lost touch with their origins and must re-engage with their communities in a variety of ways, speakers said Friday during the second day of a symposium devoted to the future of HBCUs.

"There's been a divorce between us and the community and we need to figure out if we're going to make this divorce permanent or save this marriage," N.C. Central University law professor Irving Joyner told an audience of several hundred administrators and academics gathered at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel.

"What we need is an established program that goes into a community to enhance or change the situation in that community," said Joyner, who added that too often, HBCUs view their surrounding communities as enemies. "We ought to be there for them when they need help."

As an example, the law professor pointed to nearby Hillside High School.

"What are we doing to help those students at Hillside with their education?" he asked those who had come from dozens of different HBCUs for the symposium that was the final major event of NCCU's celebration of its centennial. "If we could help them, we would create a bond."

The effort of community engagement has to be more than volunteering, Joyner added.

"It's an educational mission to help improve housing conditions in our neighborhoods," he said. "It's an educational mission to help struggling students in our neighborhoods or provide for the medical and legal needs in our neighborhoods. Are we preparing our students to return to their communities to help make those communities economically viable or are we just training them to beg for a job?

"We have so many African-American males who graduate from the 8th grade into prison. What are we doing for them?"

Becoming more engaged in their communities actually means a return to the roots of the HBCUs, several speakers said.

"HBCUs are products of community engagement," said Andrea Harris, president of the Durham-based North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development. "They were born out of community engagement," she said, citing schools like NCCU, Shaw University, St. Augustine's College and Bennett College. "All that just didn't happen inside some walls."

While emphasizing the economic impact of HBCUs on the state of North Carolina -- a total of $16 billion, and 18,000 jobs -- Harris said the institutions had to focus that impact on their home communities.

"We need to see ourselves as real economic and social engines in the communities in which we are located," she said. "But we've gotten away from that. How do we reconnect with the community in ways we were connected years ago?"

One way, suggested Phail Wynn Jr., vice president for Durham and Regional Affairs at Duke University, would be "to press the reset button on community engagement."

That means thinking about it in a different sense, he said. "Community engagement today must involve true partnerships between the institution and the community in which it resides that serves mutual beneficial interests."