Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that the State of Oklahoma has gone decades underfunding millions from Langston University, its only Historically Black College and University.
On Tuesday, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt received a letter from USDE Miguel Cardona and USDA Tom Vilsack highlighting that Oklahoma’s only HBCU has received “unequitable funding” as an 1890 land-grant institution. Data showed Langston should have had access to $419 million in state funding, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Integrated Postsecondary Education Survey (IPEDS).
Prior to the letters, some universities have been fighting the issue for years. In 2021, the state of Maryland reached a $577 million settlement to end a 15-year-old federal lawsuit that accused the state of providing inequitable resources to its four HBCUs.
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a land-grant HBCU with a $1.9 billion funding gap, is currently in a class action lawsuit in which FAMU students have alleged racial discrimination in state funding, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Kelly O’Bryan, Director of University College and Chair of the social sciences and humanities department at Langston has worked at the university for 10 years. “You attract more bees with honey… We know this issue has arisen so let’s work together to fix it,” said O’Bryan in response to the lawsuits. “But if one or other of the parties aren’t willing to sit down at the table and figure out what’s going on, or how to fix the situation… then law is an avenue that people can use to make progress.”
Langston is aware of the letter sent to Governor Stitt and is hopeful the positive conversations with the state will continue. “We appreciate the strides already made by the state in an effort to meet the mandated state match supporting agricultural extension and research at our institution”
The Oklahoma Senate and House of Representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The Morrill Act of 1862 allocated millions of acres of federally owned land across the U.S. and established colleges to “benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts”. Oklahoma State University was the first land-grant institution of 1862 before the state decided to create a second land-grant institution, Langston University, to serve Black students. The 1890 Morrill Act required the state to match every dollar given to the first institution, to the dollar given to the second. This means for every dollar OSU received in state funding since 1890, Langston should have received an equal dollar. This lack of resources has caused a large financial disparity between the two universities.
The U.S. has 19 established land-grant HBCU’s and 16 of them were mentioned in the letters distributed by the Biden Administration. Universities such as North Carolina A & T State University, Prairie View A & M, Tennessee State University, and Southern University and A & M College all have billions of dollars’ worth in funding gaps between the opposing 1862 land-grant institutions.
Cardona and Vilsack are hoping to collaborate with these state legislators to help get these HBCU’s the funding owed to them. In each letter, the secretaries made multiple suggestions as to how the state should allocate the missing funds. “We suggest a combination of a substantial state allocation toward the 1890 deficit combined with a forward-looking budget commitment for a two-to-one match of federal land grant funding for these institutions in order to bring parity to funding levels.”
Under this system, for every one dollar that goes to OSU, two dollars would go to Langston, essentially doubling the university’s land-grant funding. Even with the suggested increase in funding to the schools that need to be financially compensated, Cardona and Vilsack are adamant that the state should not reduce funding to its other institutions.
“People tend to just see a number and think oh my gosh we going to get all this money, but it’s going to take time. It took time for it to build up that high, it’s going to take time to get it, so I think people need to practice patience,” said O’Bryan.
This is an ongoing story and will be updated as it develops.
Sasha Ndisabiye
Editor and Chief
Sasha Ndisabiye is a senior Broadcast Journalism major
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The Gazette serves as the student voice of Langston University. It is produced within the Department of Communication as a teaching tool and local news source for the campus community. The views and opinions expressed within are those of the writers whose names appear with the articles and do not necessarily represent the views of Langston University.
