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NEW YORK, NY March 15, 2007 —Colleges around the country are grappling with the same problem: what to do about their declining numbers of black, male students? Women of all races outnumber men throughout higher education. But the gender gap is greatest among African-Americans. At the City University of New York, only 34 percent of black students are male and they’re less likely to graduate than other groups. WNYC’s Beth Fertig reports on how CUNY is trying to reverse that trend.

FULLER: And so I want to remind you guys the format is this, everyone’s there at 9 o’clock in the morning.

REPORTER: At Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, Rodney Fuller and some students are preparing for an event off-campus: reading to a local elementary school class.

FULLER: We’re wearing our suits. We’re wearing, there’s a decision to wear a red or black tie, red is the best way to go.

REPORTER: These half-dozen students are part of the Male Development and Empowerment Center at Medgar Evers, an historically black college. Twenty-four year old Keston Boyce laughs while discussing which colors to wear to the event; but he agrees it’s important to wear a suit.

BOYCE: I would say it makes a whole lot of sense, because the whole kind of thing about being a Medgar man is to be distinct, we want to be different and that’s what makes us stand out from the rest of the average people. As Medgar Men we want to be leaders.

REPORTER: The students in this group are considered “fellows.” They engage in mentoring programs and organize events on campus with guest speakers. The college also offers seminars on topics including fatherhood, what to do when stopped by police, and financial management. John Ball and Maurice Mazyck say the Male Development program helped them settle into college life. Both dropped out of school when they were young and later got their GEDs.

MAZYCK: I never went to high school so I didn’t know about running to admissions and the whole admissions thing, they helped me get my financial aid in order.

BALL: You know going through the struggles with work and things of that nature and after a while you decide to come to school, and you see people who have your best interest at heart and take you in and give you a place to showcase your talent.

REPORTER: Black male enrollment at Medgar Evers has gone up very little since the program started in 2001. It’s still just about 25 percent. Nor has there been a change in retention or graduation rates. About 30 percent of those who stay past three years earn degrees.

The Medgar Evers program might not have taken off just yet. But with colleges across the country describing a crisis in terms of black male enrollment, CUNY is embracing the philosophy. It’s now launched a Black Male Initiative so all of its campuses can experiment with different models for recruiting and retaining black men. The new program is run by Elliott Dawes, a civil rights scholar who says there are complicated social and economic reasons why black men are often considered “endangered,” and needing an extra hand on campus.

DAWES: With respect to environments, the enormous drop-out rate that we’ve seen in the NYC public school system, so we’re trying to develop programs where students from these targeted populations will find a point of entry to be connected to the campus and get the engagement and support that they need.

REPORTER: And as the nation’s largest public university, he says CUNY has a moral obligation. The Black Male Initiative has gotten about 3.5 million dollars in the past two years from the City Council. But despite apparent support from students and faculty, there are critics. The New York Civil Rights Coalition filed a complaint last year with the U.S. Education Department’s office of Civil Rights, accusing CUNY of violating federal laws by creating a separate program for black men.

MEYERS: It’s racial profiling. I believe it’s the university equivalent of stop and frisk.

REPORTER: Michael Meyers is the coalition’s executive director. As a black man, he calls the CUNY program misguided.

MEYERS: You talk about male development and empowerment. That’s not studying. That’s propaganda. It’s Afrocentric racial nonsense. All it is is stereotyping black men as criminally prone, at risk, needing special classes, to focus on the black men’s alleged deficiencies. It’s just racist nonsense, it’s also chauvinism.

REPORTER: Technically, the Black Male Initiative is open to all students. But Meyers claims that spirit is violated by the very name. He says CUNY can offer mentoring and assistance to all students without targeting any particular group. But supporters of the Black Male Initiative say that’s naïve. George Cunningham runs the Africana studies program at Brooklyn College, where he’s leading one of the new mentoring programs for black men.

CUNNINGHAM: Why should we treat them any differently is a wonderful idea. Why should we treat them differently? The fact of the matter is we do. And the fact of the matter is our culture does. The fact of the matter is not only do we treat them differently, but we treat them differently in ways that damage them

STUDENT: I called you a second ago didn’t you get my voice mail?

REPORTER: At Brooklyn College, 36 year-old Douglas Scantelbury checks in with fellow student. He says he wanted to be a mentor because he didn’t want someone else to experience what happened to him.

SCANTELBURY: When I was going on to college, and I'll never forget this incident, I was talking to my guidance counselor and I told him I want to go to Marist college which is in Poughkeepsie NY. And then he explained to me and said you know you’ll probably do better going to community college. I was infuriated by that. So much so that I applied to 15 colleges and got accepted at 11 of them.

REPORTER: His mentee, 22 year old Trevor Cooper, transferred to Brooklyn from Morehouse College in Atlanta. Cook says the mentoring program here helped him adjust to an environment where black men are a minority among minorities.

COOK: The Program actually made me more responsible. Encouraged me to do my word. Not just to get by, but to excel.

REPORTER: That motivation is what CUNY hopes to inspire. Through his mentoring, Scantelbury says he’s determined to help do something about the shortage of black men in higher education.

SCANTELBURY: Instead of looking at myself like I’m not good enough, I look at myself and say no, I am just as good as another student from Harvard, another student from Yale, another student from anywhere.

REPORTER: Scantelbury plans to go to graduate school this fall. He says he’ll continue to volunteer as CUNY turns to its other big challenge: recruitment. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.