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Joel M Arrington (aka Sugar Bear)
- Male
- Pikesville, MD
- United States
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Joel M. Arrington
Profile Information
- Relationship Status:
- Single
- About Me:
- I've been gone from Baltimore for what seems like a life time. I was a member of the 76 and 77 marching band and I was a vocal music major 32 years ago. I was also a Pershing Angel Sweetheart and Yo Sweetheart and saw nothing but great things in my future socially and academically. I was there with Kweisi Mfume, when he was the student member of the Board of Regents for Morgan, to fight the University of Maryland attempted take over of the University and with Oprah Winfrey when she helped us open the school of communications.
Unfortunately I also had the great displeasure to have known Dr. Nathan Carter and a few other of the holier than thou so called teachers at Morgan who tried to destroy so many students instead of helping them. Their own need to be larger than life and step on people set my dreams and me back a bit on my eventual path but they also inspired me to be better people and smarter than their limited knowledge of the world had made them. The teachers I met at Morgan almost without exception were more concerned with defeating and humiliating students and asserting their own academic prowess and egos than they ever were with the well being of students. In 1976 when I entered Morgan I was the top freshman according to their placement and proficiency examinations but because I wasn't a football hero or a basketball star my academic counseling and assistance was woefully inadequate for such a gifted academic prize as I should have been considered and the concern I should have been shown was basically non-existent. I was in fact a National Merit Scholarship Semi-Finalist and could have gone to any number of institutions but I chose Morgan much to my regret and to my everlasting shame so that I could have that "black" experience in college and in reality I simply wasted a great chance to pursue a real academic calling.
I am now a product of several schools including community colleges, private colleges, religious institutions, predominantly white, and virtual colleges. I am in my own way a perpetual student and in fact am still attending school even after reaching 50. I love information and education and I almost had that ruined for me by some very small people who thought they had a lot more power and influence than in reality they possessed. I am a life long member of the National Honor Society Alpha Chi, and I hold some 9 degrees including 2 Doctorates, no thanks to Morgan State. My GPA since I left Morgan has never fallen below a 3.44. Once I left Morgan, I never again had to sit in such a farcical class as Freshman Honors Seminar and listen to people who could barely read at a 9th grade level, publicly humiliate themselves. Never again did I have to endure the ludicrous behavior of instructors or professors who were more concerned with their own status than they ever were with the students they were entrusted with to teach and to nurture. Never again did I have to deal with asinine personal attitudes in class rooms where little was demanded and even less taught.
My time at Morgan will long be remembered by me for a few people I met along the way, 3 instructors, a couple of campus police, a university staff employee, a number of house mothers and a host of some of the strangest friends ever assembled under one roof. I have lost contact with them and others are no longer alive but the camaraderie we shared at least in my eyes will never die. As for Morgan State University I can only say I thank them for the wake up call I received about black academia. I used this lesson many times later in my life as it always seemed to be true. The old "crab barrel" syndrome is still alive and anyone that might escape and leave you back in the basket has to be pulled back down with you. I do not care if some of these so called professors have passed on, or were heralded by lesser people than I or even by their peers. To me they will always be failures for they failed me.
- Years you attended MSU:
- 1976 -1978
About
King Interview: 1964 Issue of Time
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