HOUSTON

As Texas Southern University celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, university administrators are hoping a financial bail-out and accountability plan will help the historically Black college survive at least another fifty years.

In exchange for something between $8 million and $12 million from the often tight-fisted Texas legislature, TSU officials have agreed to maintain a schedule to fix the financial aid problems of the 7,700student university. About half of that money is supposed to keep the institution, from which 75 percent of its students receive financial aid. out of the red this fiscal year. The agreement is an attempt by administrators to stave off outright state control of the school, once known as Texas State University for Negroes, whose historic role in educating Houston's Black community has ignited impassioned loyalties.

"It was through TSU that Houston Blacks developed a middle class," says Zoia Jones, a 1960 graduate and president of the Houston Chapter of the TSU Alumni Association.

The financial plight of the college has drawn statewide interest, especially among African Americans, because Texas Southern remains the only independent public Black university in Texas. It boasts a who's who of powerful alumni, including the late U.S. Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, and claims to have graduated more minority lawyers than any school in the state. In a show of support, March 21 was designated TSU Day by the Texas Black Legislative Caucus.

In his inaugural speech, TSU President James M. Douglas, a Houston native and law school alumnus, offered an upbeat vision of the institution's future: "Texas Southern University will survive because its founders and those who followed built our university on a rock. With your help we will continue to build upon a rock."

Douglas and his legislative supporters have a lot riding on their shoulders in the next few months. For about a year, The University That Sweatt Built, a bittersweet reference to the 1947 Sweatt v. Painter anti-segregation court case that resulted in TSU's state funding, has been buried under a mudslide of fiscal woes linked to financial aid mismanagement. The U.S. Department of Education, claiming that the university owes it as much as $13 million in misspent financial aid dollars over several years, has placed it on a reimbursement system. That system requires Texas Southern to pay students financial aid, then file for reimbursement showing proof that students qualify. The cumbersome and time-consuming procedure has left the university cash poor.

At a recent public meeting, State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, said a startling forty cents of every dollar the college receives comes from financial aid. The financial aid troubles led to a faculty uprising spearheaded by Otis King, a tenured law school professor and former mentor to Douglas. King's attempt to win support for conservatorship, which means the state would appoint outsiders to manage the university's daily operations, received national publicity but fell flat with faculty.

But even if the legislature gives the school the bail-out money, which would be in addition to its annual allocation, realists say the dollars don't guarantee TSU's long-term survival. State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, a chief broker of the agreement with the legislature, says the school must improve its management if it is to survive.

"We need a plan to change the culture of the institution.... But we can't do it all at one time," acknowledged Coleman, whose district includes TSU and whose father was a regent. "I said not too long ago that over my dead body would TSU end up in conservatorship or in another university system. Well, I'm still breathing."

Coleman expects legislative approval of the agreement later this month. However, King, a former dean of the law school and president of the faculty senate, said that the agreement just delays conservatorship. "The legislature is giving the college just enough support to fail," King said, following a recent spirited meeting at which Coleman, Dutton and Houston's other Black legislators championed the agreement.

In addition to the money TSU will receive from the legislature, a rider in the appropriations bill stipulates the creation of a management team, led by the State Comptroller's Office, that will assist college officials in revamping hiring, bookkeeping and financial aid procedures. The college needs $4 million to offset a projected revenue shortfall this fiscal year because of financial aid and other problems, according to state auditors. However, Douglas, who has hired a new financial aid director and changed most of the office staff, told a legislative appropriations committee that the estimate was too high. The remainder of the money would be applied toward long-term financial problems, Coleman said.

TSU has until Sept. 1 to develop accountability systems or face further legislative controls, including conservatorship. The agreement also requires college officials to provide quarterly reports to TSU regents (who are appointed by the governor), the Legislative Budget Board, the Legislative Audit Committee, the State Auditor's Office, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Appropriations Committee.

The majority of people at a recent public meeting at TSU's Thurgood Marshall Law School appeared to support the plan. Many of them, passionate about the university's independence, said Texas Southern officials need to clean house to prevent the state from permanently taking control of the institution. Most of the financial aid issues plaguing the university were detailed in a November 1996 state auditor's report. In a letter to Enos Cabell Jr., chairman of the TSU Board of Regents, Auditor Lawrence Alwin wrote: "Neither proactive leadership nor fundamental oversight systems are in place to prevent a future financial crisis."

At the public meeting, State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, said, "President Douglas has taken the brunt of criticism in this...but [financial mismanagement] has been a problem for TSU for the last twenty-five years." Indeed, state auditor's reports over the years have taken the college to the woodshed for lax financial accountability. Douglas, who became president in 1995, has pinned financial aid problems on a succession of administrators who failed to fix matters. And some university officials who worked with financial aid were reassigned to other joins on campus, according to state records, which has irked lawmakers who are now being asked to bail out the institution.

TSU officials say financial aid was given to students without documentation, but with the understanding that they would bring the necessary paperwork later. Many students at the open-enrollment college never did. Supporters say Douglas has worked furiously with staff this year to send student aid documents to Washington, D.C., so TSU can quickly receive financial aid reimbursement. Douglas said the real problem besetting the university is no longer financial but one of confidence that things are being fixed. He told the legislative appropriations committee last month that a new computer system and other measures helped staff send 700 student files to the Department of Education for reimbursement in early February. Last fall, he said, it took the university several months to send only 300 files.

However, the process is tedious and patience is wearing thin in the legislature. During hits testimony last month, State Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, admonished Douglas: "I don't want to come here next [legislative] session and have us recounting the same problems. Whatever heads must go in order to protect the students, that must happen."

Nonetheless, TSU still needs operating money. U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, wants the federal Education Department to revise the reimbursement arrangement with the college to allow TSU officials to draw down a percentage of its financial aid.

"I am asking them to recognize that there has been a good faith effort to correct the problems," Jackson Lee said in reference to Douglas's work. However, many say education officials have no reason to help TSU when it still owes the department millions.

King says racial pride and emotionalism are blocking discussions of reasonable solutions to TSU's problems, which should include joining a university system, as Prairie View A&M University has done. The historically Black college about fifty miles west of Houston became part of the predominantly white Texas A&M System more than a decade ago.

"Coming from Mr. King, I guess he expressed his view. However, I don't see TSU as being unable to solve its problem," says Jones, president of the Houston alumni association. "We ought to have brains enough to run the school."

COPYRIGHT 1997 Cox, Matthews & Associates