DATE: Saturday, November 8, 1997            TAG: 9711080316

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER

DATELINE: PETERSBURG                        LENGTH:   60 lines

STATE EDUCATION PANEL KILLS VCU REQUEST FOR BLACK STUDIES DEGREE

The State Council of Higher Education - ending a tumultuous, topsy-turvy debate stretching nearly six months - voted 6-3 Friday to kill Virginia Commonwealth University's proposal to offer an African-American studies degree.

The vote came a month after an agency subcommittee voted 2-1 to endorse the program despite the objections of its only black board member, Jeff Brown. Brown, a buyer for Circuit City Stores in Richmond, argued that the program would racially fragment the campus and carried a liberal bias.

On Friday, council member H. Lynn Hopewell, a Northern Virginia financial adviser, spoke against the program, saying colleges had to sharpen their focus and make tough decisions in tight economic times.

``This council should send a message: Restructuring is not over; get rid of marginal programs,'' he said during the council's meeting at Virginia State University, one of the state's two public historically black colleges.

``I find it curious that neither Norfolk State nor Virginia State has seen the need to have such a program,'' he said. Only one Virginia school, the University of Virginia, has an African-American studies degree.

The vote marks the first time in at least two years that council board members rejected a new academic program endorsed by the agency's staff.

Both at VCU and other colleges, academics have watched the vote as a bellwether of increasing state involvement in curriculum issues. Virginia has the authority to approve new majors at colleges, but it has traditionally given the schools wide latitude.

``This is just another example of people in government trying to tell citizens how they should feel or what they should know or what they should think,'' said Necola Pierce, one of a handful of VCU students who attended the meeting. ``. . . I'm utterly disgusted.''

Junior Janna Fayson said she wasn't surprised. ``As long as we live in a society that's racist and ignorant of other people's cultures, that's the way it's going to be,'' she said.

Grace Harris, the provost of VCU, said: ``I'm extremely disappointed, and we'll just take it back to our board.'' VCU's board reaffirmed its support for the degree in September, but cannot launch the program against the council's wishes.

``We have presented this program to this group many times,'' Harris said, ``and have always felt we presented an excellent program with excellent faculty.''

The council spent hours debating budget proposals and amendments Friday, but no more than 10 minutes on the VCU proposal. Only two people spoke: Hopewell and Harrisonburg lawyer Douglas Guynn, who supported the plan.

``I think the council should give the institution the benefit of the doubt,'' Guynn said. ``I think it's implicit in the law. I think we should give them the privilege not to be right, to be wrong, to experiment.''

The other members who voted in favor of VCU's proposal were Anne Marie Whittemore, a Richmond attorney who formerly was on Old Dominion University's board, and Newport News lawyer Donald N. Patten.

Norfolk lawyer John D. Padgett, the only member from South Hampton Roads, voted against it. MEMO: ALSO

State Council approves TCC, Beach Vocational Center/B1

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