The Biden administration on Wednesday announced $1 million in new grants for four Historically Black Colleges and Universities disrupted last year by bomb threats.
The grants to Texas Southern University in Houston, Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware, Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and Howard University in Washington, D.C., will be awarded through Project School Emergency Response to Violence (SERV), which gives short-term funding to schools impacted by violent or traumatic incidents funding to help them restore a safe environment for learning.
“Our students have gone through enough in the last three years, the last thing we need is for them to worry about their safety on campus,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in an interview with Spectrum News on Wednesday.
“These grants are coming forward with requests for additional mental health support, to address some of the trauma, to make sure that the campuses are safe and that students and families feel safety on campus,” Dr. Cardona continued. “They’re going toward programs and their schools to help students feel safe, but also to address trauma that was caused by some of these disrupting threats.”
According to a release from the Education Department, Texas Southern University (awarded $191,962) will use the funds to provide in-person and telehealth mental health services for a year, Delaware State University (awarded $217,000) will develop a Mental Health First Aid Education Program, Claflin University (awarded $440,000) will hire a licensed clinical social worker and support trainings and workshops related to mental health, and Howard University (awarded $203,000) will hire two case managers that will conduct wellness visits and contact families as needed related to student wellness concerns.
Previous recipients of these grants include Hampton University in Hampton, Va., North Carolina Central University in Durham, N.C., and Coppin State University in Baltimore, Md.. All told, the department has awarded $2.45 million to HBCUs that received bomb threats last year.
According to the FBI, more than 50 HBCUs, houses of worship and other faith-based and academic institutions received bomb threats since January 2022. On Feb. 1 of last year, the first day of Black History Month, more than a dozen HBCUs received bomb threats. The FBI said in November of last year that a juvenile was identified as having been responsible for a majority of the threats.
Cardona told Spectrum News that he visited these universities and spoke to students who told him that such threats disrupt the experience of higher education.
“Students shared with me that … they didn’t want to go out, they didn’t want to go to across campus, they were afraid to sleep at night in their dorms because they didn’t know if this was real, or where it was going to happen,” he said. “That’s real.”
“We’re coming off the heels of a pandemic that forced our students to learn from behind their computers, or to go back home and learn from their basements because the campuses were shut down,” he continued. “So it was a real impact. The fact that it was done … to HBCUs has another element of racial tension there, and that’s the last thing our students need right now as they’re moving forward in their educational journey.”
In addition to efforts the Education Department and federal government can employ to keep students safe, he urged students to “work together” to address “the culture of division in the country” – something he says higher education is crucial in working toward.
“I think we have to work together,” he said, adding: “It doesn’t help when you have these hate crimes across our country, racially motivated hate crimes.”
“We need to create a culture of respect and understanding and it has to be modeled across the country,” he continued. “Part of higher education is to learn different perspectives and learn how to engage with people that may think differently than you. I think, for me, a key to a lot of this is education and addressing ignorance head on.”
