When hundreds of Morgan State University students descended on Annapolis this spring to protest a delay in state funding for a new library, the rally inspired comparisons to the 1960s, when students marched on state capitols to demand fairness for black colleges.
But those comparisons obscured a crucial fact: Morgan State has, in the past dozen years, been highly successful in winning state funds for building projects, according to a new survey of state spending.
The university has been so successful in drawing state support that some state officials say Morgan State might soon reach the point where it will no longer need such a high level of capital funding.
Also, a debate is emerging among the state's African-American leaders over whether Morgan State can claim - as it did in the library dispute - that it continues to be shortchanged in comparison with the state's majority-white campuses.
"I would not say it has caught up from its history of underfunding, but I would say it has been treated fairly in my tenure in the assembly," said Del. Salima S. Marriott, a Morgan State graduate who taught at the university for 24 years and has represented Northeast Baltimore since 1991.
Del. Howard P. Rawlings, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was more critical of Morgan State's claims.
"It's part of the victim mentality that's prevalent in the mindset of so many people today," said Rawlings, a Baltimore Democrat and Morgan State alumnus.
Morgan State President Earl S. Richardson denies that the university's claims of unfair treatment are unjustified, saying the campus still lags far behind the state's leading public campuses.
"Though things seem to be going well here, because the neglect was so long, the urgency of the need is still compelling," said Richardson, now in his 18th year as president.
A survey by the Department of Legislative Services at the close of this year's General Assembly session shows that Morgan has received $185 million in state capital funding since 1989. This places it in a virtual tie for third among the state's 13 public campuses, behind the College Park flagship and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, which includes such professional institutions as the state's medical and law schools.
The tally puts Morgan State, with an enrollment of slightly more than 6,000 students, almost equal with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, with 10,000 students, and well ahead of Towson University, with about 14,000 students.
And it sets the campus in a class apart from Baltimore's other historically black campus, Coppin State College, which, with about 3,000 students, has received $19 million in capital funds since 1989.
Morgan State administrators, lawmakers and state higher education officials agree that the high level of funding has been needed to rebuild a campus that was neglected for most of the 1980s. The money has paid for, among other things, an engineering complex, dormitories and an arts center.
Still, lawmakers and educators say the time might soon come when Morgan State will have mostly made up for past neglect and policy-makers will have to decide whether it still needs extra state attention.
"It's a question of public policy, of asking, 'What is the ultimate goal for Morgan?'" said Hoke L. Smith, former president of Towson University. "Do you want to make it into the leading African-American institution in the country? If not, then maybe they're getting close to a resting point - not a finishing point, but a resting point."
The question has increasing relevance now, with the state facing budget constraints and with other campuses - notably Coppin State and Towson - saying that they need the kind of concerted support Morgan received for the past decade.
Complicating the debate are shifting personal dynamics. The library funding dispute exposed the growing tension between Richardson and Rawlings. And next winter, Morgan State will lose one of its strongest allies when Senate Majority Leader Clarence W. Blount retires. Blount, like Rawlings, has a campus building named for him.
Everyone agrees that Morgan State has come a long way in 20 years. A former seminary that moved to its Northeast Baltimore location in 1917, the university has long enjoyed nationwide recognition and is the only one of the state's historically black colleges to draw large numbers of students from out of state.
By the 1980s, it was struggling with a divided board, accounting troubles and an enrollment that had plummeted to 3,300 students from a high of 6,300 in 1972. With the school shrinking, lawmakers saw little reason to increase its funding.
That changed in the late 1980s, when then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer, then-Sen. Francis X. Kelly and Sen. Barbara A. Hoffman visited the campus and were so alarmed by what they saw that they resolved to rescue the college.
"It was a disaster," said Hoffman, a Baltimore Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Budget and Tax Committee. "The dorms were so awful that if you were a parent and went to visit, there was no way in the world you were going to send your kid to that school."
Sustained support since then from Schaefer, Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Baltimore legislators, many of whom attended Morgan, has reshaped the campus. The university has been aided by its decision, in 1988, not to join the state's 11-campus university system, so it can go straight to Annapolis for funds rather than working through the system bureaucracy.
New projects
Within the next two years, the school expects to open a new science center, student center and communications building.
The university had planned to start on the new library next year and is also seeking a new building for its hospitality management program. Some of the construction will be paid for with bonds available through the state's 1999 desegregation agreement with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.
An academic resurgence has accompanied the building expansion. The college still struggles with a low graduation rate, but it is gaining national attention for some of its programs, most notably engineering. More than a third of its graduates go on to graduate school, 12 percent above the state average.
Richardson argues that the state should continue to fund Morgan State at high levels because of its impact on Baltimore and the state. In 1983, he notes, 3 percent of the state's engineers were black; today, after the expansion of Morgan State's engineering program, 20 percent are, and two-thirds of those are Morgan graduates.
Lobbying tactics
Critics of Morgan State's pleas for extra support don't question the university's value, but they do question its lobbying tactics. The library battle, they say, is a case in point.
The House Appropriations Committee, led by Rawlings, had cut $3.1 million in planning funds for the library from the 2003 budget because Morgan hadn't submitted required proof that the site was free of drainage problems.
Richardson passed on word of the cut to Morgan students, who have long agitated for a new library. That week, Morgan shut its campus so busloads of students could protest the cut in Annapolis.
Rawlings tried to point out to students that Morgan was receiving $21 million in new capital funds in a tight budget year, more than any other campus. The final budget did not include the $3.1 million, but it did include an unusual promise that next year's budget would provide the full $53 million for the library, thereby keeping the project on schedule.
"It was a big brouhaha, but in the end they came out better than they would have if they'd gotten the planning money, because they were guaranteed the construction money," said William S. Ratchford II, the state's former director of fiscal services.
"Of course, ask the students and they'll tell you they got robbed. I'm not faulting the students, because it's a difficult issue to explain, but I'm sure their administrators understood that they won."
Richardson said last week that he was still upset about the cut because he believed other state campuses would not have been required to have the drainage paperwork. He also questioned how UMBC won last-minute approval of $15 million for a public-policy building as Morgan's money was being cut.
"It's an issue of fairness," he said. "They forced us to find the planning money ourselves. None of the majority[-white] institutions had to do that. We just asked to be treated like everyone else."
Rawlings' reaction
Richardson's claim that lawmakers were singling out Morgan still irks Rawlings.
"When the president tells his students that I took [the money] from Morgan and gave it to UMBC, that was just a blatant lie on his part, and it was also race-baiting the students," he said. "A lot of my colleagues are angry about that type of strategy to promote your agenda."
Richardson denies that he wrongly inflamed the students, saying he only warned them the library was in trouble and asked them "to prevail on the House to support a project that was already far behind."
It remains to be seen whether the fallout from that battle will factor into future debates over Morgan State's capital funding.
Hoffman says it won't.
"Morgan is incorrect in claiming it has been treated unfairly, but to say they've received enough money is incorrect too," she said. "We've been fair to Morgan, and we'll continue to be fair to Morgan."
Rawlings was more ominous. "Based on [Morgan's] behavior during this last session, a lot of colleagues in the House are going to be less sympathetic to their agenda," he said.
Regents concerned
Such talk worries Morgan regents. They say that Morgan, which gets about $53 million in operating funds from the state, needs more support now than ever before, because the school must pay both for its new advanced programs and for educating its many students who arrive unprepared for college.
Eventually, Richardson said, Morgan State will complete its catch-up and then will need less extra support from the state. While he wants that time to come, he said, it is a way off, no matter what some might say.
"When you reach that threshold, the university's success takes on a life of its own, and you can take it off the respirator," he said. "I look forward to that day, and I'm trying to rush it. But it would be unfortunate to take it off now."
Capital funds for colleges
Total state support, 1989-2003
UM, College Park $500.1 million
UM, Baltimore $308.9 million
UM, Baltimore County $185.9 million
Morgan State University $185 million
UM Eastern Shore $107.3 million
Towson University $94.6 million
Salisbury University $70 million
Frostburg State University $57.7 million
Bowie State University $51.3 million
St. Mary's College $37.4 million
University of Baltimore 26.9 million
Coppin State College $19 million
Source: Department of Legislative Services,
Office of Policy Analysis, July 2002