The United Negro College Fund (www.uncf.org) has launched the Campaign for Emergency Student Aid to help students at historically black colleges and universities pay tuition and room and board balances. According to the UNCF, more than 10,000 students are on the verge of being forced to leave school next month because they have fallen behind on their bills as a result of the recession. This semester alone, students owe UNCF member schools more than $11 million. The weakened economy and increasing job losses in the black community are directly tied to the students’ struggle, according to the Fund. Only a small percentage of HBCU students get total or significant financial support from their parents, because the majority of them come from families with annual incomes below $30,000. Many students have work study jobs or work in retail or fast food positions to pay their bills, and fewer of those jobs – especially in retail – are available because of the recession. The money raised from the campaign, which runs the month of March, will be used to pay students’ unpaid debt. Priority will be given to graduating seniors, and there will be no administrative costs tied to the funds, meaning all the money raised will go directly to retiring student debt. The UNCF, which administers 300 scholarship and internship programs and helps more than 65,000 students annually attend college. Sixty percent of students attending HBCUs are the first in their families to attend college; 92 percent are eligible for financial aid. The Fund aims to keep tuition at its 39 member colleges to less than half the average of other private colleges so that families can afford not just tuition, but books and room and board. On Thursday, the UNCF will celebrate its 65th anniversary with its annual fundraising dinner. Earl Graves, Sr., founder and publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, and Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy and an advocate for reform of New York City public schools, will received the Frederick D. Patterson Award and the President’s Award, respectively. The UNCF also will inaugurate a new honor - the Ones to Watch Award, which will recognize recent graduates of UNCF member schools “whose careers,” according to the Fund, “are marked by both great accomplishment and the potential for decades of further service.” The first honorees are John H. Jackson, president and CEO of The Schott Foundation for Public Education, and Ann Best, deputy superintendent for human talent for the Houston Independent School District. “This year’s award recipients make a very strong statement about UNCF’s past, its present and its future,” UNCF President and CEO Michael Lomax said in a news release.

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