By Amber Sherman, TN Regional Organizer, Black Voters Matter
As an organizer and activist in the state of Tennessee, I am painfully aware of the oppressive tactics used by the majority party in the Tennessee General Assembly to deny progress in Black communities. In recent months, the Republican-led legislature launched a baseless attack on the only public HBCU in the state, resulting in huge gaps in the university’s institutional knowledge and severe financial deficits. In a recent press conference, student organizers, alumni, and local and national leaders came together to demand that Tennessee State University (TSU) be immediately funded by the state. Without this funding, the impact of this devastating loss would be irreparable to our community. Black voters understand what’s at stake. If our demands are not met, we will shift the balance of power in the Tennessee legislature come November.
For weeks, TSU students and organizers worked around the clock to raise awareness of the impending takeover. They organized numerous actions, including petitioning the governor and the legislature to stop the takeover, holding protests at the capitol, working to educate the campus community about the situation and launching multiple phone banking and text campaigns. Despite their efforts, last Thursday, the Tennessee legislature voted to vacate the board of TSU. The original bill, SB 1596, passed after two attempts to make amendments in the House failed.
In light of this devastating but not surprising news, student organizers immediately began calling on the Governor to appoint TSU alumni to the vacated seats. Within hours of the vote, student organizers breathed a sigh of relief when word came down that Governor Bill Lee had ultimately appointed eight alumni to the board to represent the best interests of the students and university alike.
However, this small victory does not erase the failure of the state legislature in advancing a hostile takeover of the state’s only public HBCU. This move was not just misguided, it was nothing more than a diversion from the real issue at hand: the state’s failure to fulfill its financial obligations to TSU. Instead of stripping TSU of its governing body, the state of Tennessee should have honored its $2.1 billion debt to the institution, addressing decades of underfunding and systemic neglect.
Vacating the board of TSU was not a solution; it was a shortsighted attempt to evade responsibility. TSU’s board plays a crucial role in shaping the university’s policies, safeguarding its interests and ensuring accountability. The legislation undermines the principles of autonomy and self-governance that are fundamental to academic institutions. It also sets a dangerous precedent, signaling that state authorities can intervene arbitrarily in university affairs – undermining academic freedom and institutional integrity. This kind of governmental overreach disrupts the university’s governance structure, exacerbating existing challenges rather than resolving them. It’s akin to addressing a leaky roof by dismantling the entire building — it’s an overreaction that fails to address the root cause.
The heart of the matter lies in Tennessee’s chronic underfunding of TSU. The Federal Government evaluated 30 years of available data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Integrated Postsecondary Education Survey (IPEDS) to calculate the funding TSU would have received if its state funding per student were equal to that of other public universities in Tennessee. This research found that TSU was owed $2,147,784,704, the largest funding gap of all the HBCUs in the United States. The Department of Education sent a letter to the governor stating this last September.
Historically, HBCUs are consistently under-resourced compared to predominantly white schools. Rather than focusing on TSU’s board, the Tennessee Legislature and Governor Bill Lee must confront its debt to the institution head-on. Fulfilling the $2.1 billion owed to TSU is not just a matter of financial restitution but a moral imperative as an investment in the future of the state’s Black students.
We are calling on all HBCU students, alumni, educators, the faith community, Black leaders and social justice advocates to stand with TSU in demanding that Governor Lee and the state legislature pay the debt that is owed. We are not asking. We are demanding that TSU be made whole immediately!
