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Morris Brown College

Historic Fountain Hall, 1979
Former names	Morris Brown Colored College
Motto	To GOD and Truth
Type	Private, HBCU[1]
Established	1881
Affiliation	African Methodist Episcopal Church[2]
President	Dr. Stanley J. Pritchett
Address	643 Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. Atlanta, Georgia 30314 , Atlanta , Georgia , United States[2] 33°45′17″N 84°24′32″W / 33.754778°N 84.408931°W / 33.754778; -84.408931Coordinates: 33°45′17″N 84°24′32″W / 33.754778°N 84.408931°W / 33.754778; -84.408931
Campus	21-acre (84,984.0 m2), Urban[2]
Colors	Purple and Black
Nickname	MBC
Sports	Discontinued 2003
Mascot	Wolverines and Lady Wolverines
Website	www.morrisbrown.edu

Morris Brown College (MBC) is a private, coed, liberal arts college in the Vine City community of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is a historically black college affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Although Morris Brown College is no longer a member of the Atlanta University Center Consortium, it is located within the Atlanta University Center (a district designated by the Atlanta City Council).

In 2002 it lost its accreditation and federal funding due to a financial mismanagement scandal during the 1998–2002 tenure of Dolores Cross as school president. The United Negro College Fund also terminated its support for the college.^[3] Ten years later, the college filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an attempt to prevent foreclosure and sale of the school at auction.^[4]

Baseball team in 1900

Academics

Morris Brown offers baccalaureate degrees in Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology (for traditional students) and Organizational Management and Leadership (for Adult Degree matriculants).^[2]

Accreditation

Morris Brown is unaccredited.^[5] Until 2003, Morris Brown was accredited by a regional accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Morris Brown was more than $23 million in debt and was on probation in 2001 with SACS for shoddy bookkeeping and a shortage of professors with advanced degrees. In December 2002, SACS revoked Morris Brown's accreditation. Almost eight years later, the college settled its nearly $10 million debt with the Department of Education.^[6] An April 2017 Atlanta Magazine article indicated that the college intends to reapply to SACS for reaccreditation.^[5]

History

Establishment

The Morris Brown Colored College (its original name) was founded in 1881 by African Americans affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and named to honor the denomination's second bishop, Morris Brown. The AME Church sent missionaries to the South following the American Civil War, and they founded numerous new AME churches in Georgia and other states, as hundreds of thousands of freedmen joining new congregations.

On January 5, 1881, the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church passed a resolution to establish an educational institution in Atlanta for the moral, spiritual, and intellectual growth of Negro boys and girls. The school formally opened its doors on October 15, 1885, with 107 students and nine teachers. Morris Brown was the first educational institution in Georgia to be owned and operated independently by African Americans.^[7] For more than a century, the college enrolled many students from poor backgrounds, large numbers of whom returned to their hometowns as teachers, as education was a mission of high priority.

Fountain Hall, originally known as Stone Hall when occupied by Atlanta University, was completed in 1882. It is closely associated with the history of the college and has been designated a National Historic Landmark. After Atlanta University consolidated its facilities, it leased the building to Morris Brown College, which renamed it Fountain Hall.^[8]

Embezzlement prosecution

Eighty percent of the school's 2,500 students received financial aid from the federal government, totaling $8 million annually in the early 2000s. Under the Federal Government's grant-in-aid, college student financial aid program, accredited (by a recognized collegiate accreditation body) universities' request of the Department of Education reimbursing grants in aid; for each semester/quarter hour enrolled of (financially) qualifying students; who, the university's Registrar; and, accountable fiscal officer, jointly certify (to the grant-in-aid Administrator of the Department of Education) as being enrolled as full and/or part-time graduate or undergraduate students. The university also has further certified to its accreditation body that it is conducting an academic semester (or quarter) as approved for it, by its accreditor, as to overall semester/quarter length, and actual number of in-classroom clock-hours per semester (or quarter) hour to be awarded, in each classroom course offered.

A federal criminal case was filed against the former president, Dolores Cross, and the financial aid director (the accountable fiscal officer), Parvesh Singh, alleging that they had, on behalf of the university, submitted to the Department of Education (the grant administrator) false declarations of enrollment of students for semesters when, in the specified semesters, the students identified in the declarations had not, in fact, been enrolled. Since the grant-in-aid program's structure required the federal funds received to be applied to each individual enrolled student's account, the two school officers committed their second offense of embezzlement when they unlawfully applied these funds directly to ineligible college costs, such as for paying of personal staff, instead of applying the funds to offset individual students' enrollment expenses.

In 2002, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools revoked the college's accreditation because of its financial problems. Cross and Singh were charged in December 2004 in a 34-count indictment that accused them of defrauding the school, the U.S. Department of Education, and hundreds of students. The pair, who had first worked together at a college in Chicago, Illinois, were convicted of using the names of hundreds of students, ex-students, and people who were never enrolled to obtain financial aid for the school.^[9]

During the time Cross held the college presidency, from November 1998 through February 2002, Singh obtained about 1,800 payments from federally insured loans and Pell grants for these students, who had no idea they would be responsible for paying off the loans, the indictment said.^[10] Singh pleaded guilty to one count of embezzlement. Singh, 64, also received five years of probation but 18 months of home confinement.^[9]

At the time of the 2004 indictment, Cross was teaching at DePaul University in Chicago.^[11] On May 1, 2006, Cross pleaded guilty to fraud by embezzlement.^[12] She agreed to pay $11,000 to the Department of Education in restitution.

On January 3, 2007, Cross was sentenced to five years of probation and one year of home confinement for the fraud. Cross, 70 years old, suffers from sleep apnea and has had a series of small strokes, factors the judge took into consideration. An additional factor the judge considered for each person was that they did not use the embezzled funds for personal profit, but to prop up the school's poor finances.^[9] The initial indictment said Cross had used the funds to finance personal trips for herself, her family, and friends.^[13]

The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney David Nahmias, said at the sentencing: "When the defendants arrived at Morris Brown, the college was already in serious financial condition. Thereafter, these defendants misappropriated ... money in fairly complicated ways in what appears to have been a misguided and ultimately criminal attempt to keep Morris Brown afloat."^[3]

Uncertain future

The school has $22 million in long-term debt and $5 million in short-term debt.^{[needs update]} Both the alumni association and the African Methodist Episcopal Church have pledged to keep the school from closing. At its peak, the college had approximately 2,500 students enrolled.^[14]

Morris Brown College, at one point reduced to an enrollment of just 44 students, continues to operate as a scaled-down version of its former self.^[15] In 2004, Dr. Samuel D. Jolley, who had been the school's president from 1993 to 1997, agreed to return to the presidency to help the college's attempts to recover.

The school hoped to have 107 students in fall 2006, the same number when the school opened in 1881, but failed to meet that goal.^[12] Tuition in the fall semester of 2006 was $3,500, but without accreditation, students cannot obtain federal or state financial aid for their tuition and other school expenses.

By February 2007, MBC had 54 students in two degree programs, supported by 7 faculty and staff employees.^[16] Despite this, after the sentencing of two former administrators, the chair of the college's board of trustees, Bishop William Phillips DeVeaux, issued a press release stating the college would move forward and that "This sad chapter in the college's history is now closed."^[3]

In addition to civil lawsuits filed by former and current students, Morris Brown faces a civil suit for defaulting on a $13 million property bond, a case that eventually could lead to foreclosure on some of the college's most historic buildings, including its administration building, attorneys involved in the case say. The complaint asks for $10.7 million in principal owed on the loan agreement, $1.5 million in interest and a per diem of $2,100 for each day Morris Brown does not pay.

In December 2008, the City of Atlanta disconnected water service to the college because of an overdue water bill.^[17] The debt has since been paid and the service restored.

Radio personality Tom Joyner made several offers to buy the troubled college from 2002 through 2004, during the worst of the accreditation and fraud crises. In 2003, his charitable foundation gave the school $1 million to assist with its immediate needs.^[11]

The school faced foreclosure in September 2012.^[18]

In June 2013, Morris Brown's board of trustees rejected a $9.7 million offer from the city of Atlanta. However, negotiations continued and mid-year in 2014 Morris Brown reached an agreement with Invest Atlanta, Atlanta's economic development agency.^[19] The offer eliminated the school's $35 million debt by purchasing the 37 acres on which the college sits, paying the school's creditors, and paying $480,000 in back pay owed to professors and staff. The college will be able to retain use of several historic buildings for educational purposes. The city's administration wishes to revitalize the area around Morris Brown; the site of the new Atlanta Falcons stadium is just east of the campus. Mayor Kasim Reed said that the city has no interest in operating the school, and that it would be illegal for them to do so.^[20]

Several of Morris Brown's buildings are in an extreme state of disrepair and have been heavily damaged, including Herndon Stadium, the Middleton Twin Towers dorm, Gaines Hall and Furber Cottage. Gaines Hall was heavily damaged by a two-alarm fire in August 2015.^[21] Mayor Reed indicated in August 2015 that he would like to see the city help preserve the building.^[22]

As of 2018, the college has less than 50 students enrolled. The college receives approximately 2,000 applications annually but usually interest drops significantly once applicants are notified they can not receive financial aid due to absent accreditations.^[23] The college is actively trying to increase enrollment and regain important accreditations so the institution is thriving again.^[24]

Athletics

In the early 2000s, the college briefly had an independent NCAA Division I athletics program.^[25] Prior to the Division I transition, the college was a founding and active member of the NCAA Division II Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference between 1913 and 2000.^[26]

The Morris Brown Wolverines football program played at Herndon Stadium on campus until the athletic program was discontinued.

The Marching Wolverines

Morris Brown College was well-known for its popular and sizable marching band "The Marching Wolverines" and its dance auxiliary "Bubblin Brown Suga." Both were heavily featured in the 2002 box office hit Drumline and invited to perform at the first Honda Battle of the Bands event in 2003.^[27] In 2006, OutKast released a song named "Morris Brown" that featured the marching band.

The band program was discontinued at the height of its popularity in 2003.

Notable alumni

This is a list of notable alumni which includes graduates, non-graduate former students, and current students of Morris Brown College.

References

External links

• Official website