“Dr. Wayne J. Riley, president of Meharry Medical College, has chosen to go on sabbatical,” (said Dr. Frank Royal, Chairman of the Meharry Board of Trustees). We fully support him in this personal decision. The board of trustees has chosen A. Cherrie Epps, Ph.D., to serve as interim president. Dr. Epps is professor of internal medicine at Meharry Medical College and serves as senior advisor to the president and dean emeritus of the Meharry School of Medicine. She has been an integral member of Meharry’s leadership for more than 15 years, having served as dean of the Meharry School of Medicine and senior vice president for academic affairs, as well as interim president in 2007.”

“Coach Watkins will be missed. He did a great job of getting making this program competitive in his three years and we were very excited about the outlook for the 2013-14 season. Last year we swept conference power and nationally ranked Xavier. He had to make a decision that he deemed was best for him and his family at this time and we wish him much success in his future endeavors,” said Athletic Director Anthony Owens.

Assistant Coach Jay Smith was named interim head coach. A search for a replacement will start immediately.

Albany State University recently hosted and celebrated members of the Class of 1953, who took part in the university’s commencement exercises earlier this month.

“As a major trade gateway on the Eastern Seaboard, Savannah is at the heart of the globalization process,” said Reynold Verret, Ph.D., provost and vice president of Academic Affairs.  “The global logistics and international business program will produce graduates who have exceptional knowledge of logistics and international business, and the practical skills to support local companies and the wider business community.”

The program will be coordinated by the university’s Global Logistics and International Business Education and Research Center, and will be the first of its kind in the state of Georgia.

Spelman officials said they didn’t do anything different than in past years, but parents who said they arrived at or just after 2:30 p.m. for the 3 p.m. ceremony said some leeway should have been given, due to the rainy weather and the fact the President Barack Obama’s motorcade rerouted or delayed traffic when he came to Morehouse College to speak at the school’s commencement.

“This is not a happy day,” said Melvin Cox of Oakland, Calif., who missed his only child’s graduation. “I can’t put into words how upset I am.”

According to the AJC, Spelman expressed regret for the inconvenience, and cited safety measures and protocol as reasons for the blocked access.

President Barack Obama visited Morehouse College on a rainy Sunday afternoon to give a refrain on the responsibility of Morehouse Men and black America to find dignity and progress in self-reliance, a refrain that has simultaneously proven exciting and excruciating for African Americans over the last four years.

His commencement speech was highly-anticipated as an opportunity to reconnect the Obama Administration with black legislators and thought leaders whom have sharply criticized his approach to executive diversity, and policy directives aimed squarely and publicly at addressing social and financial disparities overwhelmingly affecting African-Americans. So anticipated was the president’s visit, Morehouse leadership became mired in controversy for the botched handling of an alumnus baccalaureate speaker who criticized the president in an editorial in early April.

President Obama touched on race, opportunity, tradition and commitment, carefully couched within familiar anecdotes and colloquialisms designed to give signs and signals to black America that he is still our guy.

But key words stood out in the president’s address — bitterness, excuses, standards — and one particular part of his speech that acknowledged the generational burden of the black American experience, but sternly cautioned against it as a crutch for failure to achieve the American dream.

We’ve got no time for excuses — not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven’t. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that’s still out there. It’s just that in today’s hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with a billion young people from China and India and Brazil entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven’t earned. And whatever hardships you may experience because of your race, they pale in comparison to the hardships previous generations endured — and overcame.

Some will call the president’s speech good medicine for black America to cure the prevalent self-imposition of fear and failure in our culture. Some will call it racial contempt and a lack of nuanced awareness or concern about the painful and lasting affects of slavery. But in any interpretation, the most glaring omission from his address was the need for education, and specifically historically black colleges and universities, to be at the center of any cultural reform for Black America.

The Morehouse address was a chance for the president to tout the culture-based mission and access provided by HBCUs to the working and middle-class, populations he name-checked in his speech as beneficiaries of his advocacy for “an America where everybody has a fair shot in life.” It was a moment for him to lift up HBCUs as the world’s best and most stable resources committed to preserving racial pride and American patriotism through intellectual and professional innovation, all against the backdrop of America’s lingering racial animus and covert segregation tactics.

Instead, he focused more on the product of HBCUs — capable and brilliant black graduates — and not the process by which they are molded and made. Throughout the speech, he gave examples of Morehouse alumni and new graduates as the models of hard work who, without complaint or concern for obstacles, have shaped and will shape a better way of life for themselves and their families.

But those examples have not been enough to change philanthropic priorities for wealthy Americans who are not engaged with black colleges, not enough to force federal agencies to make equitable grant-making opportunities for HBCUs in agriculture, science and tech, and the social sciences, and not enough to foster greater partnerships between the private sector and these schools.

Most of all, his speech was not enough to convince the next generation of high-achieving black students that black colleges should be the destination for those who genuinely want to being a life of service and example for black communities.

And that may be President Obama’s biggest challenge in crafting his impact as America’s first black president on black people in the 21st century. His belief in the individual potential of black people is instantly recognizable, but his disconnection from creating attention and support for systems which specifically cultivate and inspire black people to realize that potential has been startling.

One thing we can all agree on is President Obama’s optimism and insistence on what black men can do to secure our communities.

There are some things, as black men, we can only do for ourselves. There are some things, as Morehouse Men, that you are obliged to do for those still left behind. As graduates — as Morehouse Men — you now wield something even more powerful than the diploma you are about to collect. And that’s the power of your example.

It would be nice if we could rely upon the president to embed that same message in his commentary for the institutions best equipped to develop that example — historically black colleges and universities.

“We’ve got no time for excuses – not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven’t. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that’s still out there.”

He said that in a “hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world” with a billion young people from other nations “entering the global workforce alongside you,” no handouts would be given.

Maybe the first black president is one of tough love. In a 2008 Father’s Day speech, he criticized absent black dads and said that many were “acting like boys instead of men.”

At the Morehouse commencement he said, “I sure wish I had had a father who was not only present, but involved; didn’t know my dad. And so my whole life, I’ve tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father wasn’t for my mother and me.”

Some people love his black people lectures. Others wonder if the president, who appears uncomfortable advocating for black Americans with the same vigilance as others constituents, throws salt in wounds.

Most people want legitimate opportunities to work toward their American dream. They do not want or expect limitless handouts and hookups. But, if nepotism and cronyism were his true concern, then the president would not be telling Morehouse men to divorce gimme mindsets.

We get it. The president can’t be Black Power Supernegro all the time or, realistically, any time. Instead he approaches the struggle and meanders back to middle before a voter can say “moderate.”

Speaking at the prestigious historically black male college is not a covert militant move. It is largely an ode to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights icon and Morehouse alumnus. So what about using conservative talking points against people who were never afforded a level playing field?

The argument isn’t that he isn’t black enough to address the black men of Morehouse or the “black community”, if such exists. (Eugene Robinson’s book Disintegration eloquently suggests that such a community is more theory than reality.) It is more about working against the systemic issues that keep certain groups down and out.

Despite his differences and largely because of them, President Obama ascended to heights that ancestors lived, prayed, endured and died for. His accomplishments as commander in chief, a Nobel Prize winner, and now as an honorary Morehouse man, remind millions of possibility.

Possibility is where the president’s political magic spellbinds. With it, who better to celebrate Leland Shelton, who endured the foster system as a child, graduated Morehouse with honors and is off to Harvard Law School?

The president’s message of hard work, leadership and community were invaluable because neither success nor failure exists in a vacuum. All belong to a collective unit that transcends color, class or presumed station. And with less than a quarter of blacks in America having a college degree, America needs Morehouse and its alumni to continue building a better country for all.

President Obama reminded graduates of the bigger picture. “Your experiences give you special insight that today’s leaders need. If you tap into that experience, it should endow you with empathy – the understanding of what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes. It should give you an ability to connect. It should give you a sense of what it means to overcome barriers.”

For the Morehouse men, born into communities as diverse and divergent as students at any other institution of higher learning, the go-getter message had to ring especially true.

“But if you stay hungry, keep hustling, keep on your grind and get other folks to do the same – nobody can stop you.”

Digest Columnist Imani Jackson is a FAMU College of Law student. A Grambling State University journalism graduate, she was editor-in-chief of The Gramblinite newspaper and a radio talk show host for KGRM 91.5. Her writing has been published in Politic365, Black College Wire, Clutch Magazine, and The Daily American in Somerset, Pa.