NEWS: African-American alums of DSU launch scholarship drive

By Robert Smith
The Cleveland News Leader

A group of African-American alumni of Delta State University has decided to begin raising money to finance minority scholarships. The group, led by businessman Edward Pope, hopes to be able to provide scholarship funds, starting in the fall of 2007, to four DSU students every year – two incoming freshman and two community-college transfers.

Pope, a member of the DSU Alumni Association Board of Directors who studied biology at DSU and graduated in 1985, cited the increasing percentage of African-Americans in the student body as a factor that influenced his decision. He and other black alums that have joined in the fledgling scholarship effort explained in an interview Thursday that they think it is important to give back to the university, as well as to help future African-American students at the school.

“We need to support each other,” said Amonzo Kincaid, a current DSU student. “Delta State is not like Ole Miss. It doesn’t have all those other grants.”

“We want to make this a yearly thing,” Pope said. The idea is for the proposed African-American Scholarship Endowment to benefit from an annual Black Alumni Reunion, Pope and other participants in the initiative say.

DeGail Hadley, a medical school student who graduated from East Side High School and Delta State, recalls that other public institutions of higher learning in Mississippi offered him minority scholarships when he first applied to college, but he didn’t recall there being any minority scholarship at DSU.

“We want to make an appeal to all people, especially those who attended Delta State, to support this scholarship because it’s truly important,” Pope said. He emphasized that he and his peers desire the help and participation of people from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

“We’re not just talking about the black community. We’re talking about the white community and the business community,” Pope said, rejecting the idea that the new project is somehow just a “black thing.” He also anticipates wider participation among African-Americans, since he and the other founders of the scholarship drive are affiliated with the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

The group of men is making plans for an inaugural DSU Black Alumni Reunion on the weekend of Nov. 10-12, 2006, with a scholarship gala on Saturday evening. Events during the reunion are to be held both on-campus and in the community, Pope said. There is to be a raffle prize awarded during the gala. Raffle tickets will be going for $100 apiece. Additionally, people interested in helping the new scholarship endowment can contact Pope through P.O. Box 4313, Cleveland.

“I really feel like this is a big move on the part of Phi Beta Sigma and African-Americans as a whole,” said Kincaid, who is a CIS (Computer Information Systems) major and head of the DSU undergraduate chapter of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.

“This is a great opportunity for alumni and those support groups that have already supported DSU in the past,” said Melvin Stimage, an adviser to the Phi Beta Sigma undergraduates at the university. Other early participants in the minority scholarship drive are Jeremy Weaver and Jeremy Chatman.