COLLEGE MAKES OFFER: GIVE 1, GET 4 YEARS FREE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993                   TAG: 9304040205
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: HAMPTON                                LENGTH: Medium
COLLEGE MAKES OFFER: GIVE 1, GET 4 YEARS FREE
Hampton University President William Harvey proposed a program on his school's 125th birthday that some students may be unable to ignore: free tuition for four years in exchange for a year of community service.
The proposal aims to prepare students to battle society's ills while fulfilling their career goals, Harvey told a school fund-raiser Thursday.
Harvey said he wants to raise $50 million, an amount that would allow the university to pay tuition for about 750 students at the current rate of $7,000 a year. He will seek the money from individuals, corporations and foundations.
The scholarship program would allow the university to attract the "best and brightest" students, regardless of their ability to pay, Harvey said Friday.
Students selected for the program would be required to put in a year of community service before graduating. Students would have to cover room and board, now about $3,000 annually.
Participants would work at a school, community center "or some other community uplift program" for a year to get their diploma, Harvey said. The service could be local or in another city or state.
Harvey said he sees the program as a way to lead the historically black school back to its original mission of being "not only an academy for learning, but also an academy for leadership and service."
The idea, he said, is to indoctrinate students so they are "committed to ridding our communities of crime and illiteracy, to improving the environment, to moving our race from a position of consumership, to creating a world where man's inhumanity to man is the rare exception rather than the prevailing rule."
Harvey said Friday he intends to start raising the money right away but has no idea when the program might start, if at all. He said he discussed the issue with the university's trustees Friday. The board took no formal action but gave Harvey permission to pursue the concept.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB