With more than 22 years in higher education, I am no stranger to what can be achieved when diligent and personal service is afforded to young Black and Latino men. The recent call to action by President Obama on behalf of Black and Latino young men provides startling statistics and realities to those responsible for integrating, collaborating and elevating the social position of these underrepresented populations.
To the point, they need to graduate, and we’re failing at getting them to the stage. Many programs across the country use “intervention” tactics to “spark” graduation rates. Although some have been successful, most intervention tactics hit nowhere near the mark. Still these programs are administered everyday around the country, and what I’ve found as a critical ingredient in the most successful programs is that they seek to make immediate and sustainable impact by applying a concept I call “Intrusive attention.”
I was fortunate some years back to start a male development program at a mid-western university. The students named it, Da BOMB, an acronym for Black Optimistic Men and Brothers, which represented the powerful energy released when positive Black men come together. This program took athletes, choir boys, Greeks and geeks and turned them into progressive scholars, spiritual beings and overcomers. The students even came together and actually paid their president at a rate that was the highest among student workers throughout the university. The BOMB still exists today, but there was something missing from its core, and I knew it, so I began to search for a better mousetrap.
About 15 years ago, I heard about the Student African American Brotherhood (SAAB). SAAB, now sometimes referred to as SAAB/B2B (Brother 2 Brother for a more inclusive title) began in 1990 at Georgia Southern University. Today it has grown to more than 250 chapters across college and university campuses; middle and high schools in more than 39 states in the U.S. Each chapter is run by student leaders.
I saw early-on that SAAB/B2B employs what I’ve come to know as intrusive attention ― the in-depth, whole-person approach to self-image transformation and societal responsibility. SAAB /B2B was designed to ensure that young men of color enjoy the privilege of social, cultural and spiritual enrichment while achieving academic advancement to graduation. The program increases the number of African American and Latino men who graduate from college by creating a positive peer community based on a spirit of caring.
I had the privilege of oversight for a SAAB/B2B chapter in Northwest Indiana from 2005 until 2011. It boasted a roster of 60-plus junior college and four-year university men with ages ranging from 17 to 62 and a four-year retention rate of 87 percent. Intrusive attention provided to the life structure of these men was the key to success. We knew when the students were in class, and when they were at work, or not. Most importantly, we knew who they loved and who they wanted to love them. We counseled about their closest friends and about being good fathers, men of faith, financially savvy and socially straight. The model in Indiana was the first of its kind for SAAB/B2B, a two-year/four-year school chapter, and it worked beautifully. In 2010, this chapter was dubbed “the most stellar chapter in the Mid-West.”
It’s a pleasure to now oversee another model for SAAB/B2B in Springfield, Mo., a place known well as the second whitest city of its size in the United States. This time, a pipeline for male development and academic advancement is expected to be built with support for universities, high schools and middle schools. This work is timely and aligns perfectly with the onset of President Obama’s Initiative for Young Black Men. We are just getting started, so let me tell you what has happened thus far, what took place this weekend and what will happen in the coming weeks.
