The following article appeared in my MSNBC mailbox a few moments ago. Wes GRAMBLING, La., July 23 — Black and gold banners proclaiming ”100 Years of Excellence” remain on lamp posts throughout the Grambling State University campus a year after the historically black school’s centennial. Such symbols of longevity seem to be needed reassurance at a time when the institution is struggling to overcome an episode of accounting incompetence so drawn out it now threatens to close the school. “SOMETIMES I wake up at night, shaking, wondering, what if?” says Helen Richards-Smith, dean of the university’s honors college and a Grambling faculty member for most years since she graduated from here in 1944. The campus of red bricks and white columns amid the piney hills of north Louisiana, founded by an association of black farmers in 1901, has been unable to provide financial statements deemed acceptable for a state audit since 1997. Such an audit is generally required in three consecutive years for reaccreditation, a process that occurs every 10 years and is now about two years past due at Grambling. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, an Atlanta-based national accrediting group, has placed Grambling on probation and has set a Sept. 16 deadline for an approved audit for the past two academic years. If Grambling loses its accreditation, it will also lose federal funding including financial aid for its students — 90 percent of whom now receive this aid. If unaccredited, Grambling’s degrees would lose value with graduate school admissions offices and professional licensing boards. “We’d be out of business,” says David Wright, a Grambling graduate who sits on the Louisiana university system’s board of supervisors, which oversees the school. “All over the country it would be a terrific blow because we have a lot alumni and friends of Grambling.”
