GreenHornet33
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I Root For: Jackson State Tigers
Location: Arlington,Tx
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RE: My impressions of the ULM campus
(07-05-2017 10:09 AM)Usajags Wrote: (07-05-2017 04:59 AM)BRtransplant Wrote: (07-04-2017 03:47 PM)TaxusExpress Wrote: (07-04-2017 03:16 PM)Usajags Wrote: Just took the edge off the boredom and rode down to LaTech and Grambling.
We'll start with LaTech, campus felt bigger, but it should, it's a bigger school. Looks like they have recently torn down a building on campus and were cleaning that up. They are rebuilding the press box on the football stadium. Considering this is who ULM is directly recruiting against, I give LaTech the upper hand on the facilities I could see. Baseball, basketball, soccer and softball stadiums all looked equal.
Now for Grambling. I'm unable to discribe what I thought it would be, but it was much larger and nicer then I expected. The campus maintenance was behind, grass needed to be cut, things like that, but over all nicer then I expected. They are replacing the field turf in the football stadium, which was basic but nice. It is FBS size and would be easily expandable in the bowl it sits in. The campus had some noticeably new buildings such as the Student Union building. Baseball stadium is on the opposite side of campus, and is small. The field, dugouts, cages and bullpen all need to be updated. For a campus for less then 4,000 students, it was huge. Maybe management of that school has turned a corner and they are coming back around. The basketball arena looked to be newer then the other two schools. Softball and soccer were equal to the other schools.
The end result is Louisiana has 3, all major sports playing schools, within 30 miles of each other. Two FBS and one FCS with a huge football history, even if kids today don't know that history. They are all recruiting in an area that isn't heavily populated, all competing for the same kids. And doing it under the same university system umbrella. Without the right administration, it's would be easy to fall behind the other two in the facility wars.
Glad to hear they have grass. Went years back, looked tired and worn down.
Welcome to Louisiana politics, no sane reason to have 3 universities within 30 miles much less 2 within 5 miles. It's 2017.
Grambling University was sorely needed when it was established. It, like all other historically black colleges, was established because of racial segregation. Now, even though the primary reason for GSU's existence is no more, it is too politically incorrect to even speak of ever shutting it down.
Today, the two HBC's in Louisiana remain a drain on Louisiana taxpayers solely for political reasons. The vast majority of black high school students that meet the academic requirements of La Tech, ULM, UNO, or ULL, attend one of those schools over GSU or Southern. Though GSU and Southern are no longer needed, the citizens of Louisiana will be stuck paying the price for this political correctness for a long time to come. The same can be said about almost all HBC's.
The two public HBCU's in Alabama are both well positioned in the state. Alabama A&M has an endowment of $119milliom and sits on 880 acres, Alabama State's endowment is $86.5 mil. Except for UA-Huntsville for A&M and AU-Montgomery for State, neither university is relatively close to another public university, and neither UAH or AUM play football. If they could shake the HBCU designation, they would just become intrastate regional universities. For what it's worth, there are white students on both campus', I've seen them on their athletic teams.
Also, Alabama State recently built their new OCS, and it is exactly what I want at South!!!
Why would we want to "shake" the HBCU designation?
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