By Hannah Denham and Kayode Crown
As the board of trustees met on the campus of Alabama A&M in Huntsville on Friday, a small group of residents held a rally 100 miles to the south in Birmingham.
The residents gathered to show their support for A&M’s plans to buy the campus of Birmingham- Southern College, which closed last month after years of financial distress.
“We’re asking them not to abandon our community,” said Kamau Afrika, a 1985 graduate of Birmingham- Southern. “I know that the property will deteriorate with time.
Meanwhile, no portion of the A&M Board of Trustees meeting addressed plans to purchase Birmingham- Southern. A spokesperson told AL.com to send an email with questions for a later response. A&M officials have said that they soon will make a second offer to buy the campus.
In Birmingham, signs with A&M’s logo lined Arkadelphia Road near the entrance to the 168-year-old campus. Residents called for Birmingham-Southern to accept A&M’s offer to buy it.
The campus was quiet Friday morning. Litter sprinkled the grass on the edge closest to the street. An electronic sign flashed “Congrats, graduates,” calling back to the final commencement ceremony three weeks earlier.
In Huntsville, Daniel Wims, the president of Alabama A&M, boasted of his administration’s strategy to grow enrollment this fall, on the back of a record number of students – 6,633 – last fall.
Wims said the school is “making a very strong push for an enrollment increase” each year as part of the university’s strategic plan.
The school offered millions of dollars in scholarships to more than 2,800 students, following the official visits from the president’s office to nearly 200 high schools this year, Wims said.
“We are seeing a very good return on those investments,” Wims told the board. “It’s yielding many students who have elected to choose us as their first choice.”
The president said closures and enrollment declines for other colleges is a warning sign for A&M, citing a recent report. He did not mention Birmingham- Southern, specifically, in his statement to the board.
“We have to make sure that we stabilize for the next few years so that we don’t experience that and if we experience a relative decline, then it’s commensurate with a fiscal decline,” Wims said.
Birmingham TV station WBRC reported that Miles College in Fairfield has also expressed interest in buying the Birmingham- Southern campus. If either potential deal goes through, it would mark a major expansion for a historically Black institution in Alabama.
When Susan Mitchell lived in East Thomas while raising her children, there was a period when they didn’t have Internet at home. She’d bring them to Birmingham-Southern’s library, which was open to the community, to do their homework every evening during the school year. She even completed her mas- ter’s degree in English and American literature from UAB in that library.
“It was invaluable,” she said. “Those who knew about it are very grateful for having access to the library there.”
As president of the Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust, a small nonprofit working to preserve affordable neighborhoods for local residents, Mitchell said she’s worried about potential development of the campus if A&M doesn’t purchase it.
“It can further remove people here who want to stay here,” she said, adding that A&M is a “solid institution with state support.”
Dora Sims, who has lived in Bush Hills since 1976 and is now vice president of the neighborhood association, also has seen firsthand the community’s mutual relationship with Birmingham-Southern.
She graduated in 1984 and recalled campus leaders and students supporting neighborhood cleanups and the community garden, as well as coming out to Five Points West events.
“BSC has been a very good neighbor to Bush Hills,” Sims said. “Them leaving is just a great loss for our community, but we are certainly hopeful we can continue that relationship.”
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