Using community colleges to prepare students for integrated contexts
In this excerpt Gerry discusses an alternative integration plan that would exploit the community college system to route students through lower-tier schools with the aim of eventually getting them into higher-tier ones.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Martin Gerry, August 28, 1991. Interview L-0157. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- MARTIN GERRY:
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I wouldn't blame it all on Bill Friday, because I think that
had more to do with that campus than it had to do with the
attitudeߞand I'm sure that the system people had a
lot of problems trying to keep these campuses in any kind of order.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Yeah. They still do.
- MARTIN GERRY:
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Oh, sure. And, I mean, I'm familiar with the California
system so I'm sure it can't be totally different.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Yeah. Well, it'sߞyeah, actually ߞ
- MARTIN GERRY:
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I don't envy them, that job. And I'm sure that
they had a lot of trouble getting these people at Chapel Hill to even
seriously discuss it.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Yeah.
- MARTIN GERRY:
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I think that thatߞbut that, you know, interestingly, in the
course of southern school, college, desegregation, really I think
outside of the some of the other social roles, the only two institutions
that probably faced that problem that much in terms of admissions
criteria were U.Va. and Chapel Hill.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Do you think theߞto what extent do you think that the
secondary and elementary model was useful in attempting to tackle the
problem of higher ed?
- MARTIN GERRY:
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Well, in North Carolina it was interesting because, of course,
it's used in theߞat the community college, the
technical school level. That is to say, it's open admission.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Right.
- MARTIN GERRY:
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You know, the usualߞthe old academic freedom argument. When
you look at the back tier, the AA level, North Carolina has one of the
most extensive, and certainly one of the better quality, universal
higher education systems.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Right.
- MARTIN GERRY:
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So in North Carolina, it seems to me, it was already being used. And one
of the things we kept trying to do was to talk to the people at the
second tier level, if you want to call it that, higher education tier
level, about creating some kind of parallel roots for the kids who went
into that first level. Now, I think that's very
muchߞit follows what we did in many cases in elementary and
secondary education. I think it was a quite feasible approach. At least
it appeared to be. Now how politically real it was in North Carolina, I
don't know. But there seems to be a very strong
community-based system in North Carolina, more than any other southern
state, of these higher education institutions. Now, whether you could
have ultimately done what was proposed for awhile in California, and is
still being played around with, which is to be getting this sort of
sorting out, you know, of the first two years of higher education from
the last two. There have been proposals for quite a long time that, you
know, turned Berkeley, for example, into a sort of an upper
undergraduate institution and let some of the other colleges provide the
first two years.
- WILLIAM LINK:
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Oh, yeah.
- MARTIN GERRY:
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Create that kind of model. That might have been the beginning of an
answer in North Carolina, I think. Because I think California actually
is the other state with North Carolina. California and North Carolina
probably are two of the most extensive systems. You could have, in other
words, have begun to channel black and white students through some of
these institutions byߞthat are quite numerous and
community-based, and created at least an alternate route into higher
education. It's the placeߞyou know, the University
of Minnesota, there are a couple that they do something called the
general college. But there are several models that could have been
probably been pursued. How much I knew about that at the time
I'm not sure. But I think that in retrospect, if I had it to
do over again, I think I would have probably spent
more time pursuing that sort of approach. In fact, it may well have
happened in North Carolina. I don't know whether there have
been some significant progress in that area. But it seemed like a
natural.