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Bettie
Murchison, who has resigned and will
step down as executive director for the
DuBois Center at the end of this month,
plans to continue most if not all of the
center’s programs, including
after-school tutoring, mental health
counseling, job readiness for young
adults, the school of the arts and
others.
She just needs a home for
her newly-incorporated W.E.B. DuBois
Community Development Corporation.
Her first and obvious choice
would be to remain at the 17-acre DuBois
campus owned by the National DuBois
Alumni Association. “I gave them a
proposal,” Murchison said this week, in
which her corporation “would assume all
of the liability issues they have issues
with.”
The association’s board will
meet this Saturday, Feb. 18, at 11 a.m.
at the center. “I have no idea how
they’re going to go,” how they will vote
on her request or if they will even
consider it. “They did not act on it at
the January 21 board meeting,” Murchison
said.
Roger Shackleford of
Raleigh, president of the local alumni
chapter and a member of the national
board, was somewhat optimistic this
week.
The ideal solution, one he
had envisioned before the present
controversy, was that “the program side
of that campus, organizationally, had to
be separated with its own board and
still operate on that campus. That’s the
ideal to me, where there’s a connection
maintained,” Shackleford said’
What he is hearing from
alumni is that the programming at the
DuBois Center “is not compatible with
the mission of the alumni association,
which is stated in the bylaws.
“That vision has always been
that the campus has been the centerpiece
of education in that community, and they
want to continue that education focus.”
Shackleford said that in the view of
some alumni board members the current
programs like mental health counseling
“do not fit into that pure education
category.”
Shackleford said the alumni
board members did not get an opportunity
to see Murchison’s proposal for the
corporation to lease or rent space at
the January meeting until someone picked
up the papers from the table and mailed
them to the members later.
Speaking of the current
programming and the educational vision
of the alumni board, Shackleford said,
“The center is surrounded by a community
that needs all of that for the community
to grow and the people in it to thrive.”
Mavis Farrar, who was
president of the alumni board for four
years before last fall’s election, said,
“We really got most of the board to give
their consent to what we were trying to
do. Our mission and vision were to help
the community, others and then the
National Alumni Association of DuBois
High School. I hope that the board will
recognize the mistake in permitting her
to resign and do all that she wants to
continue in the position.”
Murchison has some hopes
that a letter Susan Neeley has sent to
all the alumni board members will have a
positive effect. Neeley is the chairman
of the separate advisory board for the
center.
Neeley said she sent the
letter to each of the alumni board
members after Lawrence (also known as
Eugene) Perry, president of the
association, turned down her request to
speak to the board at its Saturday
meeting. She is holding the morning open
in hopes she can speak to the board.
Many of the board members as well as the
larger alumni association membership
live out of town and out of state.
“My thought is that there
are members of the board who are not
aware of his (Perry’s) posturing and his
heavy-handedness,” Murchison said.
“The board voted not to
accept my resignation. He did not tell
me that,” Murchison said. “He’s not
going to do what he’s asked to do but
what he wants to do.”
But Murchison said she could
not wait to find out the board’s
decision – if any – on Saturday. She and
her assistant, Cathee Miller, are
scouting for possible sites for the new
corporation and preparing applications
to continue the various programs.
“This is a funding cycle. We
have to apply for funding now. We can’t
keep everything on hold while they
debate,” Murchison said. “We can’t wait
for summer to get in proposals for
summer programs.”
She said she had already
been approached by the Banks Kerr Family
YMCA, which would like to increase its
successful summer camp program from 75
to 100 children this year. She has had
to put that request on hold while she
finds a space large enough for the
program.
Many if not all of her
current staff of about 120 people will
move to the new corporation. “It will be
a personal decision for each staff
member,” Murchison said. “I’m not asking
anyone or forcing anyone to go.”
She said the staff members
are “a wonderful, compassionate,
hardworking group of people who deserve
to know someone is working on keeping
them employed. They are people who left
other jobs to come here” and they need
consideration as well as the many
families the center programs serve.
Murchison has officially
formed the corporation and applied for
federal nonprofit 501(c)(3) status.
She said last week she took
those steps after consulting with and
receiving support from local community
leaders and business people.
“The whole community has
been very supportive,” Murchison said,
with people stopping her at the post
office and at the bank to express their
concern and support. “It is affirmation
there’s more work to be done and I can
stay.”
Perry, who lives in
Baltimore, was elected president of the
alumni association at its annual two-day
reunion over the Labor Day weekend last
fall. He said last week the board plans
to hire an interim director to continue
the programs now underway at the center.
That interim director, Perry
said, will help decide and the board
will review what grant programs to renew
for future years. |
